Blog Thaime

Day 7: The Road to Merida

2009-02-26T02:36:00.012+07:00

12.30.2008

Manny and Eric were long gone when we awoke five hours later, somewhere on a dusty road to Jaco, traveling southbound in either country, nursing hangovers and dealing with a musty bus home. Thad and I had a bus to catch to get to Merida, a town on the southern part of Ometepe and in the shadow of Volcan Maderas, the inactive volcano of the island.

Proving it was farther off the beaten path than we already were, we had to pile into a bus and endure the worst - hands down the worst - road conditions I have ever seen. Our bus assaulted the many potholes, oversized rocks and muddy banks with aplomb, trudging along relentlessly at top speeds of maybe 18 miles per hour. Through it all, Thad and I conversed about what we always did - baseball, girls, grunge music, and stupid movie quotes - as the scenery unfolded away outside. Banana trees, untamed coastline of brush and pelicans, open fields of tomato plants, and tiny brick storefronts all took turns dominating our view, always with the dramatic background of ominous, sulfur-shrouded volcanoes. To call it beautiful would be misleading; this isn't the tropical paradise you see in prime time television or vacation magazines. The beauty of this terrain was that on this island, nature wasn't just winning the war ever-encroaching footsteps of man's progress. Nature was dominating it.
The herky jerky bus ride was to get better before it got worse as we pulled into Moyogalpa, the midpoint town of the island. After a brief stroll around the central park, Thad and I sat down in an open air restaurant and chatted up a British man and his Canadian son. Visiting from Toronto, they were regulars to Nicaragua and Costa Rica, Ometepe in general. In fact, they were looking to purchase a plot of land on the island and build a bit of a vacation house. Danny, the son, was 15 and in ninth grade up in Toronto, splitting time with his mom and his apparently jetsetting father.

Thad and I liked Danny immediately. True, we were both twice his age, but he had a passion for hockey that was similar to ours in baseball, he knew where the good food was in Merida, and he was just in general an overall good kid. He told us to stop by their hotel later because they had a buffet and some kayaks for rent. We told him we would, as we found him much cooler than his father.

When we got back on the bus, we endured more rocky roads and impressive sights, but the 45 minutes of grinding and bouncing certainly had worn thin by the time we got to our destination. We were en route to Monkies Island Hostal, a sparse, simple spot for backpackers to chill out on hammocks and admire the views from. After a bit of exploration, we check it, dropped our shit off, and looked for a swimming hole.Walking around Southern Ometepe was a new experience for us. It wasn't like Altagracia was Manhattan or anything, but at least there were stairways there. Merida and the surrounding areas were exclusively rural - tiny stone shacks amidst farmland overcrowded with chickens, pig, and crops. Kids played baseball in the dirt roads, knocking rocks at each other at dangerous speeds and playing well into the dark in front of audiences of all ages. Enthralled by my camera, a device which was worth what their families made in a year, they posed for me, laughing when they saw the results of my clicking on the screen. They were joyous and welcoming, and everyone passing by - be it on bike, horse, or foot - said hello.Thad and I defied the fact that man-eating bull sharks infested the waters of Lake Nicaragua and went for a dip that was warmer and better than any of our previous showers. The sun started to set. It was orange. It was beautiful. It was perfect.

Day 6: Thad, Manny, Eric, and Eric vs. The Volcano

2009-02-26T00:45:00.017+07:00

12.29.2008

We woke up under the hazy shade of hangover, knowing full well that the previous night's shenanigans were going to make volcano hiking more difficult than it had to be. So we wandered around Altagracia for a bit, looking for a nice place to eat lunch, before settling on a tiny spot right across the street from our hotel. The place was half cafe, half schwag store, but it was charming enough and their menu had a nice variety of seafood caught from the lake. We all knew we needed some serious recharging, as the hike up Volcan Concepcion was around three to four hours and not for amateurs.

Being that I'm always a bit wary of the questionable hygiene of seafood in third world countries, I ordered pescado de vinagre - which was two fish, fried, and served with a vinegar dipping sauce. I figured that whatever little bacteria might be poking around wasn't going to survive a good dousing in acidic pepper dipping sauce, let alone being cooked in hot oil for about five minutes. It was delicious. I have to say that the food of Nicaragua wasn't the most overwhelming culinary experience I've ever been subject to, but those people know how to make a hearty meal - and whatever it is, it's usually deep fried.

At about two, we piled into the back of a pickup truck and began our ascent to the base of the volcano. Luis, our guide, told us that this was going to be the last trip of the day - in fact, we were leaving much later than he was accustomed to. But Manny and Eric had to leave in the morning, and the only reason they had made the trek from Costa Rica was to climb this mother. Perhaps as a sign of where adventure seeking is going, they found Ometepe while messing around on google maps. They saw this weird volcanic crater in the middle of a lake and decided they had to check it out. Like I said, we liked them immediately. I definitely can appreciate more whimsical instincts in strangers, particularly in Americans. From the back of the truckbed, we got a firsthand glimpse into life of the Ometepe natives. Kids on horses steered cattle up the dusty roads, old women washed clothes in streams, and banana trees lined all sides of us. Tiny brick buildings, no more than a living room, bedroom, and small kitchen, dotted the hillside as we continued to elevate. These people literally lived on the banks of an active volcano, but it was business as usual - business that is basically identical to how most of the world lives. We were just visitors in the back of a truck trying to climb a volcano as high as we could. The truck let us out, after a few issues with traction and motion, at the opening of a dirt road flanked by barb wire fences. On both sides of the fences was open farmland, with the occasional horse or cow minding its own business out there. A few old caballeros rode by on tired looking horses, hauling firewood or oranges back to who knows where. We were on our way up.Ometepe is home to all sorts of interesting wildlife, most notably a whole bunch of howler monkeys and white-faced monkeys. As we made our way up, we were buzzed repeatedly by colorful butterflies and extraordinarily large blue jays. It was like a Charles Darwin acid trip, only we weren't allowed to sit and watch. We had to keep moving, and move fast. Luis told us that no matter how high up we were, we'd have to turn back at 5:30, otherwise we'd be hiking downhill in pitch black. That sounded like a good idea to me. We cracked jokes and called each other hateful names as a two foot coral snake slithered by.

After about 90 minutes, we were all pretty winded. Eric, who was the most gung-ho of us, decided he'd had enough once we came to a large clearing and told us to go on without him. It was unfortunate, considering 12 hours prior to this he swore he'd climb to the top of this volcano himself if he had to. Our guide shrugged, implying that this was normal, and trudged up without delay.

We weren't hiking towards the summit for a few reasons. One, it's completely shrouded in noxious gasses, and two, there's not really a view up there to begin with because of the clouds and aforementioned gas. We were going to go up to a clearing, enjoy a view over Lake Nicaragua, and head down. Hopefully, we would see some monkeys and more cool shit on the way. I was down for whatever. I love rainforests.

About 45 minutes later, Manny had enough. By this time, we were all covered in mud, sweaty, dehydrated, and sucking air. The volcano had gone from a wide, beaten path, to a steep and muddy series of trees and branches you had to pull yourself up with. Thad had a large walking stick, which probably would have been a good idea, but stupid me wanted to take pictures on the way up. Rain was falling on and off, and when it was on, it was falling hard. By the time Manny decided to hook back and hang with Eric, we were soaked in sweat and rain and our feet were caked in mud.

Thad and I followed Luis for another hour. Thad was about to call for mercy when we stopped. We sat on a tree trunk, shaded from the rain, and surveyed the mountain. It was getting dark, but we got the impression that this was true wilderness here. We were at the very mercy of the Earth and to think otherwise would be to further flaunt our contempt for nature. It would have been more humbling had we the energy to feel humbled. We sat there and chatted as the sounds of howler monkeys echoed off of hundred year old trees.

Our moment of glory didn't last long, however, as the sun was quickly retreating over Lake Nicaragua, casting a purplish hue over a sky becoming increasingly starlit. We made our way down after finishing two liters of water.

On the way down, Luis kept simulating howler monkey sounds to get some monkeys out of hiding for our entertainment. Finally, we spotted one climbing a tree. We watched it for awhile before realizing that it wasn't howling into the distance. In fact, they were surrounding us, as fascinated by us as we were of them.

We met up with Eric and Manny after about a half an hour. They were perched closely together in the clearing we left them, looking almost terrified as they pointed skyward. Eric went on to tell us that while taking a shit in the bushes, a monkey came about 15 feet away from him and stared. Naturally, he took a picture - but the flash scared the monkey and it retreated into the trees and called all of his friends down. Now they were surrounded by, according to their count, nine monkeys in the trees, all howling (a howler monkey's howl sounds more like a grunt to me) and all staring at them. According to the little kid in Jerry Maguire, bees and dogs can smell fear. One wonders if a pack of howler monkeys can also.

The walk back to the truck took about an hour as we awkwardly tripped over rocks we couldn't see, sporadically using Thad's flashlight to conserve batteries. These were the same walks Sandanista rebels would take, hiking back paths and holing up with farmers, AK-47s in tow and US funded Contras lurking around every corner. I won't pretend to have felt a kindred spirit with these heroes of yesteryear, but I will say that my respect for them increased exponentially when experiencing the harshness of the land.

We got back and showered up and went out for a few drinks and dinner. I think we were too wasted to get wasted, and the night out ended prematurely when a very forward young gay kid wouldn't leave Thad alone. We went back to the hotel and told dirty jokes for about three hours. It was a fitting end.

Day 5: Tengo un gato los pantalones.

2009-02-13T08:10:00.008+07:00

12.28.2008

Being at the beach was nice and all, but there weren't really many adventures to be found there. Poneloya was a very sleepy little beach town where the surf was decent but even better a bit offshore. There was a definite feeling that they were gearing up for something big, and Frank confirmed that they were - for New Year's, the entire town would become a beach party, with the scores of Léon's college kids rolling in to get drunk and celebrate 2009 properly. But sadly, it was time to go. There was a hell of alot more country to see.

We had pinpointed our next destination, at the urging of other backpackers we had come across, to Isla de Ometepe, an island in the middle of Lake Nicaragua, a few hours south. Ometepe is a pretty small island home to two volcanoes, one being active. We were told there was all sorts of stuff to do there, and the obvious presence of party people made it a pretty easy choice.

Off we were.

On the way back to Managua, we stopped by Frank's grandmothers' house. She didn't speak any English and she gave him hell for not being home for three days, but she gave us some fresh canneloni and some delicious cake with rum in it. Traveling is fun and all, but nothing - repeat, nothing - can replace the joy of a home cooked meal.We were off on our merry way down to San Jorge, a small port town an hour and a half boat ride away. We took one of the last buses out of Léon, so we knew we'd have to spend the night there. On the way down, we were able to see quite a bit of rural Nicaragua. We both commented that it reminded us of pictures we'd seen of African savannas - some parts were sparsely foliaged, some parts dense rainforest. Either way, the whole way down we were witness to poverty, farmers, overcrowded buses, and a smattering of gorgeous scenery. I've seen more out of buses than I ever thought I would, and it's always opened my mind to the true nature of the world and how things really are, especially coming from California - where, in many places, you are what you drive.

We got into San Jorge as the sun was going down and split a cab to the nearest hotel with a German kid whose name now escapes me. He was a nice guy, his Spanish was about on my level, and was trying to make his way down to Colombia for six months of volunteering. He couldn't get over how expensive everything was in Nicaragua - a result of just having spent a week or two in Guatemala, where he had an air conditioned room with cable tv for two dollars a night.

We split a room with him and I claimed a top bunk a foot and a half away from a ceiling fan. As we were getting settled, Thad met two more Americans while out on a smoke break - Manny and Eric. We agreed to grab some dinner at the only remaining open restaurant and see if we could get our itineraries to jive.

An hour later, we were three or four beers deep in an Italian themed Nicaraguan restaurant. We got along with Manny and Eric immediately, the similarities extending far beyond a shared first name. They were also, unfortunately, a sobering reminder of everything going on back home - Manny was readying himself for the restaurant he was working at to close, and Eric was a part time Staples employee who had been an engineer/land surveyor until he had gotten laid off a few months before.

They were good guys. They had spent most of their time in Costa Rica (cheap flight from Florida, where they were from), and had come up basically to climb Volcan Concepcion. They had taken a first class bus up, complete with a meal, reclining seats, and a movie. Costa Rica was a different world - I likened it to Thailand, with Nicaragua being Laos. There were more tourists at the former, more high class places to stay, more visitors - but that's not to say that this country was void of adventure.

We finished our meals and closed down the restaurant and the proprietor pointed us to a bar across the street. We continued to drink, with stories and tales of home getting trashier and more offensive by the minute. I wondered what our German friend thought of us when Manny and Eric told us about their obese friend sitting around eating entire blocks of cheddar cheese. Hey, ain't that America.

Sooner or later, we found ourselves at the last open bar in San Jorge - a brightly colored little establishment right on the water with a sandy, hardwood dance floor, some drunken locals, and loud reggae blaring against the sound of crashing waves. If I hadn't known any better, I would have guessed we were somewhere in the Caribbean; it was 80 degrees, the water was warm, and the music was happy - and we were all wasted.

The bar was full of Nicaraguan local girls, so I taught Thad to say "Quieres bailar conmigo?" (Do you want to dance with me?) and/or "Quieres bailar con un Americano?" He was fearless, and he acutally used the line effectively a few times as I continued to pound shots of rum in a dark corner and rant about California to our new friends.

We closed the bar down a few hours later, with Manny telling everybody he passed by about a fiesta in Hotel California (really the name of our hotel), en cuarto siete. The world was spinning. We knew it would be a rough boat ride in a few hours.

Day 4: Let's go to the beach, have a barbecue

2009-02-11T02:25:00.008+07:00

12.27.2008

Four or five hours of intermittent sleep later, I found myself brushing my teeth and spitting into a plastic pipe to oblivion. We weren't necessarily hungover, but certainly not up to snuff, given the beating that the volcano surfing had administered on both of us in addition to the booze and lack of sleep. The hostel housekeeper walked up to me saying that my taxi was out front waiting for me. Confused, I walked down to the cast-iron front door to see Frank's smiling face as he leaned on a taxi being helmed by a friendly looking middle-aged man. Frank was wearing the same clothes as the night before and he still reeked of booze. He proceeded to tell me about his exploits after we parted ways at 4AM - exploits that included a drunken cab ride with two girls that somehow evolved into a threesome in a dingy hotel.

Given his appearance, I figured he had bumped himself up from the bag of blow he bought (with Thad's money) and spent the night at a cat house. The truth was probably somewhere in the middle.

Regardless, he had brought his cabbie friend over to take us to Poneloya - a small beach community about 30 minutes west of Leon. We didn't really hesitate before hopping into the cab. We paid our $21 for three nights and were on our way after stopping by to grab some beers for some hair of the dog action on the ride over. We were feeling pretty festive in no time.

We arrived in Poneloya actually pretty amped up and lightheaded, finally settling on the one hotel that wasn't on the beach because they offered the best rates and had a very impressive selection of hammocks.

About an hour later, I was asleep in a hammock, Frank was passed out in the wrong room (for about five hours), and Thad was wandering around aimlessly, switching from hammock to hammock as Cypress Hill blared over the PA. The need for a recharge was obvious and we had come to the right place.

Around sunset, Thad and I took a walk down to the beach. As we took this trail between an abandoned plot of land and an empty but luxurious villa, I started telling him about one of my goals for the trip.

"My boss told me that on this trip, I have to go on a vision quest. I have to find my totem animal and follow it into the forest. Once we get there, I'm going to learn something about myself."

On cue, a wolfish looking dog not unlike Max (aka Wolfie) from Terminator 2 walked right by us. It was uncanny. Thad was in agreement that I should follow it. Unfortunately, all it did was eat some garbage and take off back into town. I followed the footsteps as long as I could.

We ate two meals at Poneloya - the first being the best meal I had in Nicaragua. Our hotel had the best ceviche I've ever had as well as a regenerative sopa de mariscos - a coconut milk soup with a whole fish, crab, and other various seafoods swimming around. Afterwards, I felt like I could race a locomotive around the world.

Later that night, after Frank awoke from his stupefying hibernation, he took us around the town. There were a handful of beach hostels around, very reminiscent of some of my favorite places of all time in Thailand. We passed an empty lot right on the beach, facing scores of surfers hauling their boards into the water as the sun began to set. The lot had a "Se Vende" sign sticking out of the barren, garbage-covered sand. For sale.

I asked Frank how much that lot would have cost. He guessed about $80k. I told them how my dad had a dream to buy a little space on the river up in Sarrat, build up a humble little space out of the local wood, and have a piano bar. I thought about the kind of life one would lead, chilling out in paradise all day and chatting up people from all corners of the world over cold beers and local food, and started to wonder.

Day 3: Smack That

2009-02-10T07:01:00.010+07:00

12.26.2008

The first thing I asked Thad when we woke up was if he really knew this Frank dude, and where exactly they had partied back in the states. Thad didn't know, but we figured he was cool since we both made it home in one piece with minimal damage to our pockets. So what the hell, we figured. It was time to continue our odyssey into the heart of Northwestern Nicaragua.

One thing Nicaragua has aplenty, in addition to coffee, fried chicken, and giant asses, is volcanoes. Leon itself is surrounded by eight, I believe, most of which are still active - including, as we were soon to learn, the diminutive Cerro Negro (Black Hill). It wasn't a far drive out to get to Cerro Negro, which perhaps explains its popularity among the suicidal and the extreme sports aficionados.

Sometime within the last decade, a rather entrepreneurial Nicaraguan got the brilliant idea to charge adventure and injury-seeking tourists to "surf" down Cerro Negro. It's a small volcano, covered in smooth volcanic ash, relatively steep, and only an hour up. Never being a pair to back down from something stupid to do, Thad and I placed it on the top of our list of things to do in Leon. One phone call later, we were on our way to the Black Hill, boards in tow (after I rejected the idea of sledding down on a mattress) and accompanied by a few Belgians and their dog.

The climb up was short, but strenuous. It was like walking in snow - every step would sink six or seven inches. The air was thick with humidity first, then with sulfur. It wasn't easy, nor was it very pretty. It was like walking on another planet. Off in the distance, garbage fires burned, sending slow tornadoes of smoke into the sky. We chit-chatted for a bit, talking baseball with our guide. He was a Red Sox fan, mainly because he loved Manny Ramirez. He told us a "secret" that Nicaraguan ace Vicente Padilla was older than he said he was.

We made the top of the volcano, not able to hear each other talk over of the wind. It was startling how cold it got up there, in no shade and drenched in sweat from the climb up. Regardless, we relaxed, finished off our water, and strapped in.

To say I "surfed" down the volcano wouldn't be misleading, it would pretty much be an out-and-out lie. Several face-plants, three cubic liters of blood, and one pair of jeans later, I slid to the bottom in one piece, wondering how exactly I survived such a pitiful display of balance and coordination. It's not that I'm that uncoordinated, I just plain sucked. Still, falling didn't hurt nearly as much as sterilizing the wounds that still scar both elbows, and when I took off my underwear to shower an hour later, the amount of volcanic ash to come out was nothing if not laughable. Hell, we surfed down a volcano. Kind of. How many other people can say that?

Later that night, we met up with Frank for a night around Leon. However, it wasn't until after the woman running our hostel offered to get us anything we wanted - "Marijuana, cocaine, mujeres...". I was beginning to see why this town was so alive - and also why I felt every middle aged american we met was on the run from pedophilia charges back home. We went right into the drinking, and Frank and I were determined to do two things: Get Thad laid, and have a good time (in that order).

We soon found ourselves at least seven liters drunk with a pocketful of cocaine. I was serving as Thad's translator to these two girls that Frank knew, somehow communicating to them that Thad thought they were both very pretty and that he wanted to dance. Everything was going swimmingly, or so I thought, until one of the girls leaned over the table to whisper something to her friend. With her body at a complete 90 degree angle bent over the table, I leaned over to Thad to tell him how things were going. At least that's what I twas planning on telling him.

"You should slap her ass."

"I should?"

"Yeah, she's totally into you."

There have been a few instances in my life when things appeared to happen in slow motion. Usually it's something kind of upsetting, maybe traumatizing, but it's always something noteworthy that you'll be telling stories about forever. This was no different.

My jaw dropped as Thad reached back to wind up.

Smack.

There have also been a few instances in my life where time has just seemed to kind of stop and I've looked up and everyone is just kind of staring. This was definitely one of them. Even the girl whose posterior had just been violated couldn't say anything. She just stood there with her mouth wide open. Time seemed to freeze for at least six minutes. I swear the music stopped.

I buried my face in my hands, too mortified to laugh, as she proceeded to speak at a speed beyond my comprehension in Spanish. We were more than ugly americans. We were now the ugliest people in the bar.

It didn't matter though - about an hour later she offered to have sex with any of us for thirty dollars. We declined. Thad even dusted off his Spanish for this one "No pago dinero para panocha."

Several hours and many drinks later, we once again found ourselves in the vast after-hours courtyard bar referred to as Charlie's. We learned that just a few meters away from us, many years ago, President Anastasio Samoza was assassinated by a Sandanista poet, Rigoberto Lopez Perez. Bullet holes still dotted the walls, a reminder of the number of executions that had taken place in this former Sandanista stronghold. And this, with the warm 3AM breeze, palm trees swaying to Latin music distortedly blaring from a primitive CD player, and drunken college kids dancing and laughing in a corner, surrounded by geckos and bullet holes in the wall, perhaps summarized this country more than any other place we'd find ourselves.

Charlie walked up to us and handed Frank a lit cigarette, saying something in Spanish I didn't understand. Frank translated.

"Some bitch wants to come talk to us and sit down. She just gave us this cigarette." He offered it to Thad, who turned it down.

"Bring her over, I want to meet her." Charlie gestured to the shadows.

Out walked a young boy, maybe 15 years old, in tattered cutoff jeans and a sleeveless faux basketball jersey. He was smiling. Frank buried his head in his hands.

"He wants to suck someone's dick." Like I said, Frank was a little rough around the edges.

Charlie asked if the boy could sit. We stared awkwardly at each other. Thad said, "well, he can sit, but he's not going to suck anything of mine."

I pondered telling the old "mouth is a mouth" joke but thought better of it. Frank said something in Spanish along the lines of "Puede sentar aqui, pero no queremos..."

We stared awkwardly at each other some more. The kid left.

Day 2: Kings of Leon

2009-02-06T04:48:00.013+07:00

12.25.2008

We woke up on Christmas Day and decided to take back to the air. The Corn Islands, two little nuggets of unspoiled paradise off the Eastern Coast of the country, were basically the only destination I had intended on seeing during this trip. The sand there is white, the beers cheap, and the water clear. I had intended to dust off my scuba skills and maybe go fuck with a manta ray or something. The only problem was that it was Christmas Day. There were no internet cafes open and the only payphone at our hotel wasn't working. That didn't help, considering that we had to call the airport. If you didn't fly to the Corn Islands, the river boat ride just to the eastern coast of Nicaragua was three days long. We didn't have that time to spare.

After a Christmas lunch at Pollo Estrella, one of Nicaragua's many fried chicken fast food joints, we took a cab to the airport. It's not really like either of us to just show up at an airport and expect to be able to buy a ticket out of dodge on the spot, but we figured it was our only shot. I had a hard time trying to figure out how the hell to get to the Corn Islands from home - internet capabilities are certainly limited in some parts of the world - so I guess we thought a little face time was going to do the job.

Unfortunately, the airport was closed. We had to think fast to avoid spending any more time in Managua. We had felt enough shadiness and been told by enough people to stay off the streets to know that we wanted to get somewhere with a bit more of a pleasant vibe. I gave Thad the tour book and said I would defer to him. It took him less than ten minutes to decide.

Leon is known as perhaps the intellectual capitol of Nicaragua. There are several universities, it used to be the home base of the Sandanistas, and was surrounded by eight volcanoes. Most importantly, the guide book had two of the sweetest words that two American backpackers could possibly read: "Cheap hookers."

No wait. I meant to say "Party town."

We soon found ourselves in a packed minivan, cruising by perfect, cone shaped volcanoes, their crowns clouded in sulfur, smoke ominously rising from the top. Leon was about two hours away.

We were greeted instantly by horse-drawn carts and cobblestone streets. No building was over two stories high, each a different two-tone color scheme. It was bright. It was warm. It was gorgeous.

It didn't take us long to get our bearings. Everything in Leon seemed to be built around the parque centro, a quaint little tree-lined courtyard flanked with cathedrals and cafes. The park was full of food stands (fried chicken and french fries, of course), but was particularly festive this Christmas Day. We were immediately smitten. It seemed as though nobody was inside. The streets were spilling over with people eating, talking, and people watching.

After settling into a pleasant, if sparse, hostel named Hostal Clinica, we took to the streets. But exploring leads to hunger and we eventually found ourselves scarfing down on a steak dinner, a porkchop dinner, an appetizer of hot wings, several beers, and several rums - Flor de Caña being both Nicaragua's, and in my opinion, the world's best.

A few hours later, we were at a bar nursing our fourth or fifth litro de cerveza. You can buy yourself a bottle of beer in Nicaragua, or you can buy your table a liter. Not that the former is expensive by any stretch of the imagination, but the latter is a better value. A liter of beer in Nicaragua is anywhere between $2.00 and $3.50.

I got up to use the lavatory sometime around 11:30 at night. When I came back, there was a new person at our table.

"Whassup, man? I know this motherfucker. We partied back in Cali!" He threw his arm around Thad. Thad shrugged his shoulders.

He was short, heavily tattooed, and a little rough around the edges. He was drunk, but he was affectionate. His name was Frank, and he had recently moved back to his hometown to work, live, and eventually start up his own business. I liked him, but I wasn't naive enough to trust him yet. Call me naive. Or maybe cynical. But he was going to make our trip more interesting for the next 48 hours.

After a few more liters of beer, he offered to take us to an after-hours club. We walked a few blocks, stumbling behind Frank as he greeted random security guards and various socialites on the street. We turned into an empty street, where he knocked on a large wooden door. An older man opened a window 15 feet behind us and peered out. Frank greeted him and the door unlocked. He told us to go in.

Now, 24 hours before we were about to walk into a room of complete blackness, we were walking down a street in Managua in complete blackness. I'm all for finding adventure on vacation, but these were definitely two instances where our judgment could have been called into question.

The door shut behind us. It was just us and a Nicaraguan we had met two hours earlier with jailhouse tats, a gold tooth, and a connection to us that was tenuous at best. I had about $300 on me and my new camera. My heart was going to explode out of my chest. I clenched my fists. Another door opened.

We were greeted by an enormous courtyard, symmetrically lined with palm trees, and a perfect rectangular opening letting an infinite amount of starlight to trickle through the shadows. There were two lights in the entire place, on opposite corners. Four or five sets of plastic furniture dotted the place. Nicaraguan hip-hop was playing. A group of drunken college kids sat and talked in a corner.

We sat down and had three or four more liters. We weren't dead. We had a new friend.

Day 1: Running Around Managua with a Sword

2009-01-07T13:53:00.015+07:00

12.24.2008

I arrived in Managua surprisingly wide-eyed and bushy tailed for someone with about five hours of sleep and an airport Nathan's Chili Dog in his stomach (slowly devoured before 9AM). But somewhere in the middle of Miami International, the sweet smell of canvas, chewing gum, stagnant air, and sunblock hit my senses and I realized that for the first time in almost three years, I was again out there. On an adventure. Somewhere away from the norm, away from my beloved memory foam bed, away from home, away from the god-forsaken world of routine. Don't get me wrong, I'm not one that dislikes my life, but the chance to live in the moment doesn't always present itself the way it does when you arrive in a foreign land with no itinerary and limited language skills.
A cabbie greeted me at the gate with a handheld sign with my name on it. It was a surprisingly classy move for a hotel that charged $15 a night. He whisked me away to the Hotel Los Felipe of the Martha Quezada barrio in Managua, Nicaragua's capitol city. He didn't speak much English, so this was the first chance I got to blow the considerable layers of dust off my spanish skills. He gave me a tour, mostly talking too fast, but I picked up a few words here and there. He pointed out Managua's tallest building, which didn't look much taller than nine stories. He pointed out "barrio muy pobre" out the window, which was a sad stretch of encampments consisting of garbage bags and twisted chicken wire. "No es bueno," he told me, shaking his head. Then he offered to be our personal driver during our stay in Nicaragua. I didn't expect that to be the last time someone said that.

When I pushed open the door to our room, Thad was lying in bed with a bag of beef jerky on his chest and ESPN Deportes on the screen in front of him. Mark Texeira had signed with the Yankees only about 14 hours earlier. Word travels fast, I suppose.

We got acquainted with ourselves and still resisted the urge to try to make any sort of gameplan, instead opting to walk around our neighborhood and get a long-awaited local brew. Thad had been there the night before, but had wisely resisted the urge to wander around in the dark.

At a little bar across the street from our hotel, we each ordered the first of what would turn out to be many Tonia beers. The local brew (about 75 cents per bottle) was something similar to Rolling Rock - good enough to both hit the spot and worth ordering again.

A disclaimer: my first impression of Managua came on the afternoon of Christmas Eve. I assumed it was inordinately mellow, given the predominantly Christian culture, but we later found out that the town, or at least the barrio we were staying, was used to kind of a muffled tranquility. As we walked, sporadic explosions of firecrackers punctuated our steps off in the distance.

After a dinner of pollo frito (my first of three consecutive fried chicken meals), gallo pinto (beans and rice), and fried plantains, Thad and I retreated back to the room to plan our night. The guide book recommended a few places, the closest one being an Irish Pub (yes, Irish. I have now been to Irish pubs in Bangkok, Prague, Budapest, and probably many more places I cannot remember. God Bless the Irish). On the way out, we asked the front desk which way we needed to walk to get there. She told us "No camina, muy peligro. Take a taxi."

Not wanting to tempt fate, we flagged down a cab. When we told him the destination, he kept saying "Es cerca, es cerca." I thought he was saying it was closed, but in reality he was saying "It's close." It wasn't worth taking a cab to. But we paid him two dollars anyway. The ride lasted about 40 seconds. Oops.

Thad and I sat down and continued to sample the local brews. More Tonias, and another brew called Victoria, which doesn't sound Nicaraguan, but is. Thad preferred the latter, I the former.

While we were sitting outside, enjoying the 85 degree Christmas Eve night, a middle aged, worn-looking man engaged us in a conversation, of which I understood maybe nine percent. His job was to hail cabs for people that were drinking too much. I'm sure it was a job that made him 75 cents a day. But he was reasonably well spoken, and from what I understood, he had to drop out of college when his father died. His name was Jesus.

The conversation stopped and started with awkward pauses and no comprendos, until he started pantomiming boxing moves. I said "Soy de los Philippines, y Manny Pacquiao tambien" (loosely, and horribly, "I am from the Philippines, just like Manny Pacquiao." The man's eyes lit up. He went off for about five minutes, mentioning Oscar De La Hoya, muchos Mexicanos que pierden (many Mexicans that lost), and god knows what else. He was pretty stoked to have a common interest as us Americans. Hell, I was stoked too.

We wanted to keep moving, so we asked him to hail a cab. He did, but when the cab arrived and we told them where we were headed, he waved it off. He said he'd walk us - nobody would bother us if they saw us walking with a local. Given the several beers we had and the relative proximity of the hotel, we agreed.

Once we got down to our street, I could see why it had a reputation for muggings or worse. The trusty Lonely Planet guide book even told us to assume we were being watched.

It was pitch black. Orange streetlights illuminated the horizon from off in the distance. We basically just had to walk towards the light. I told Thad that if any shit hit the fan, we just kick nuts and take off running. A bit exhilarated, we stepped into the darkness.

It was like walking into a blanket that had just been taken out of the dryer. We couldn't really see much. During breaths and pauses in our own conversation, we could hear people out in the distance, in the darkness, talking. Maybe they were celebrating Christmas, maybe they were plotting to murder us. I wasn't sure. It wasn't really the wisest move in the world, given that I had been in Nicaragua for about five hours, but there we were - walking in the dark, with a stranger we could barely communicate with, in a neighborhood known to be dangerous, and with a few beers in us. Nonetheless, when I had finally started to really ponder the stupidity of being in that situation, we were home.

I tipped Jesus five dollars. He gave me a hug and told us to meet him back there on Friday. Then he hugged Thad. His gratitude and affection were genuine.

homeward bound (i wish i was)

2006-06-20T12:29:00.000+07:00

the other day i was chatting with my cousin and she asked me what, in all of my travels over the last six months, i had learned. i don't think she meant it to be such an abstract or poignant question, considering it came in the context of talking about missing burritos and serious gastrointestinal problems, but over the course of the last few days, most of which were spent lying in bed watching "Walking Tall" over and over again, i had time to consider the question.

i've learned that the most effective mosquito repellant is johnson and johnson's baby oil.
i've learned that carrying drugs into Laos is punishable by execution.
i've learned that it's ilegal to have sex with a Laotian in Laos if you're not married to them.
i've learned that Czechs party the hardest.
i've learned that there's an Irish pub in every corner of the world.
i've learned to never put yourself in the position when you're abroad that you don't have any cash on you.
i've learned that excessive amounts of spicy foods can be hazardous to your health.
i've learned that i want to do this again and again and again.
i've learned how to scuba dive.

i could go on and on, really, but it's not very interesting to list a whole bunch of pointless, somewhat arbitrary facts. i didn't know how to explain to her what i had learned, because in all honesty, seeing the world has been a very profound experience, and it's one i have trouble putting into words. i think, though, the most important thing, is to discover new depths of emotion that had previously been untapped. awe. sadness. inspiration. it's all there.

and these are the things you think about when you're not up to being out and about because your stomach is still killing you. but thanks to a daily tablet of 40grams of Nexium, i'm back at work, not doing work, and writing in this blog for the first time in over a week.

last week i was unpacking my clothes from my abbreviated trip to Koh Chaang, and as i was shaking them, i realized that there was still a shitload of sand in the pockets and what not. that's fine, whatever. but as i was putting my shoes on, i noticed this hideous little creture lying on its back and struggling to breathe was lying on the floor. i believe it had been stuck in my sweaty ass clothes which i had left unpacked in a plastic bag for a few days and it had probably spent that entire time slowly suffocating. it was still alive, and despite being completely repulsed by its existence, i decided to let it live. of course, that came after taking its picture next to this american penny so all of you loyal readers back home might have a frame of reference on the fauna and flora of thailand.

i have, quite a few times, walked home in the later hours of the day/night, and, upon seeing these little beasts, kicked them with all of my might against the closest wall. the impressive thing is that after withstanding the force of a size ten adidas from a 170 pound human being 1000 times its size as well as the force of a solid brick wall slaming into its thorax, the typical cockroach scampers away, unscathed. so i do tend to believe that these things will honestly be the sole survivors once the idiots in charge of the world decide to nuke us all into oblivion.

i wonder if Thailand would be a good place to be when the shit hits the fan and the world erupts into an all encomassing religious war. this is a Buddhist country. It's bordered by Buddhist countries. the buddhists have tended to shy away from the whole jihad/manifest destiny train of thought. there's not a huge history of aggression against thailand or by thailand in particular, although the country does have its violent skeletons in the closet. still, it's something to consider. i'm not getting increasingly paranoid, i'm just making these observatoins as an objective observer on the world. I'm an American, sure, but I'm not in America. it's interesting to perceive my home from a position of being so far away, geographically and mentally. it's a crazy world, and that belligerent cowboy in charge over there did inspire a tshirt i saw the other day saying "make the world safer and kill yourself" with a picture of the man holding a gun to his head.

anyway, my stomach is on the mend and i have a plane ticket back for July 5 on China Air into SFO at 19:30. I expect a throng of well wishers to pick me up and take me to buffalo wings and the freemont [sic] bar and grill on first and folsom for karaoke and catching up.

this is what you'll get when you mess with us

2006-06-12T15:21:00.000+07:00

so in the spring of 2004 i was working at this job that i absolutely abhorred. with few exceptions, i pretty much held the entire office in complete, unhealthy, and utter disdain. it wasn't their fault, really, i was just poorly equipped emotionally to have that kind of lifestyle at that moment in time. chalk it up to immaturity, youthful idealism, and just plain idiocy (idiocy that remains, sadly, alive and well to this day) that i was held captive by such circumstances for as long as i was.

but it is what it is and it was what it was and this is a story of how one day eric tried to exact his revenge.

every month at my erstwhile company - we'll call it Initech for now - they had one of those office morale boosting activities. they had an employee of the month, naturally, company softball, friends in fitness, the usual corporate bonding measures. for obvious reasons - the main one being i'm a total hater - i never participated in any. until that spring, you see. because that spring was the annual Initech Chili Cook-Off.

It was unlike me to so excitedly rush to participate in an Initech-sponsored event, but i nonetheless spent 90% of my work time researching various chili recipes - not on the usual distractions of friendster, and up and coming site called orkut.com, ignoring myspace, and fantasy baseball. i wanted to win this thing, dammit. but you see, i didn't just want the best tasting chili. that's boring. i wanted the hottest. and it wasn't just that i wanted heat. i wanted to channel all of my rage into this one crock pot of chili and...well, cause some pain. i must admit that the extra ingredient in the chili wasn't salt, it was rage. rage at my lot in life.

at the time, my girlfriend lived in san diego. and the one thing i knew about san diego was that in their outdoor mall in the gaslamp district, they had a store devoted solely to the wonderful wonderful invention we all know as hot sauce. when i went down for my monthly or bi monthly visit, and we made a beeline straight for the store. i couldn't afford the $200 bottle where you had to sign the waiver, but i could easily afford the $12 (i think) bottle of "da bomb", which was a hot sauce i had experienced before - on the tip of a toothpick. at the time, it was the hottest sauce i'd ever had in my life, and it was just dipped once. on top of that, i threw in half a bottle of dave's insanity sauce, which allegedly is strong enough to get grease stains out of your driveway (it's hot. not as exotic, you can get it at the local andronico's). i marinated my turkey meat (i used turkey because as a low fat substitute, i was more likely to get the lay [fatter] people to sample my wares) for three days in this concoction before adding the obligatory habaneros and what not.

the beauty of the thing was that this came at the height of the no carb phenomena. and for those of you health freaks out there, chili is very low in carbohydrates. so when i labelled mine "low-fat/atkins friendly", people were all over it. i had eaten a bowl of it the night before - and not to flatter myself, but i do consider my gastronomical tolerance to be far above average (ask my sister) - and about a half hour after eating it, i felt like someone wearing sandpaper gloves was twisting my insides with the same fervor of a wronged thai masseuse. pain. beautiful, beautiful pain.

it didn't cause quite the destruction i hoped it would, other than a few people saying "it tastes like burning" and "i think my soul is melting", but in the end, it was a malicious act and i took a pretty insidious delight in it. and now it's off my chest for the world to see.

i bring this up because the karma police is coming back around again - i think i have an ulcer.

no joke, dude. when for three months you're ordering everything "thai spicy" and adding vinegar to every soup or salad you get, there's only so much acid your body can take.

hence, my trip to elephant island was spent mostly in the prone position - not that it's a bad thing, considering there's worse places to be lying prone (like an alien probe table or the Hollywood Upstairs OBGYN College) than a pristine white sand beach with thai women massaging your back for $4.00. it's just that being in thailand and deciding to swear off all foods too hot or too sour is a special brand of torture. i mean, look. giving up hot foods is tough for me. but being in thailand and giving up hot foods? it would be like putting a gun in howard dean's hand and saying here, howard dean. here's bill o'reilley. shoot away, we won't punish you - only the clip is full of blanks. it's torture.

nonetheless, i got to relax a bunch when i wasn't running to the bathroom. i'll spare the graphic details, but just be glad, dear readership, that it's not all shits and giggles here in bangkok. well,it kind of is. i guess it's half that.

dammit.

If you don't come in tomorrow, don't bother coming in Monday.

2006-06-08T15:23:00.000+07:00

So in honor of His Majesty King Bhumibol Adulyadej's ascension to the throne exactly six years ago on Monday, the Bangkok city streets have become a lively, festive host city of visiting dignitaries and royalty, festtoned with white lights, unflappable Thai flags, and the King's Crest proudly posted on every building and storefront in town over a brilliant yellow, the color of the King's birth month.

Translation: Five Day Weekend.

I really picked a helluva time to experience Thailand. I got to party it up for Songkran last April, and this weekend - Monday, specifically - there's a royal barge parade on the Chao Phrya River (the main river the slices through the middle of the city that I live two blocks away from). It's quite a big deal, the King over here is the longest reigning active Monarch in the world. And from what I can tell, he's a good guy.

Thailand is a democratic country, but the role of the King is much more active than say, those hacks that live in a fancy castle in England. When the King talks here, people listen. He's kind of like the retired basketball coach with nine championship rings that you just have to listen to. Granted, he's not officially in charge, but are you going to argue with him? He's revered here, so revered that there seems to be a problem with the stocking of yellow shirts (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060605/ap_on_fe_st/thailand_shirt_shortage) with his crest on them. Do I have one? Of course I do. I'm down with the King.

I'm so down with the King, that I thought I could honor him AND Run DMC if I made a sign for the Royal Barge Parade (this will be my first time seeing the King in person - he no longer lives in the 'kok) - but a sign reading "Down with the King" would probably land me in jail - no matter how adept I might be at explaining my American colloquialisms.

RIP Jam Master Jay

Well, I have tomorrow off and I have Monday and Tuesday off, so I figure that tomorrow might be an opportune time to catch a bus for a six hour ride over to Chantaburi. What's in Chantaburi, you ask? A dock. And where does that dock lead to, you ask? It leads to Koh Chaang. And what does Koh Chaang translate to, you ask?

Elephant Island.

Elephant Island is cool, and it's close, and it does have some big freaking elephants, but I admit I do wish I was going to Candy Apple Island. Over there they have elephants, but they ain't so big.

Actually, Koh Chaang is supposed to have some still virginal rainforest, and even that has days that are numbered, as Koh Chaang is rumored to be the next big budget destination in Thailand. It's close to Bangkok, it's reasonably undeveloped - and, well, it's beautiful. Being that I found very little (one) photos on Google Image Search when I punched in Koh Chaang, I'll just have to go see for myself.

See why I love this freaking country? So much to do. A round trip on the bus is 900 baht fromt he tourism authority here (900 baht = $24), but I am certain I can get a round trip ticket for 550-600 if I got to Kao San Road. I go, I find a hut for 200 baht a night ($5), chill out, write my TV Commercials, watch the World Cup with some drunk blokes, and come back Sunday Night in time to see the King and Queen in all of their resplendent glory.

Yeah, I'm a lucky fuck.

Lao do you want it.

2006-06-06T11:30:00.000+07:00

Every morning on the way to work, something makes me smile. Either a dude asleep in the back of a tuk-tuk, an old woman washing guavas, or a cute little kid in a sling staring out into the hazy Bangkok streets, this place is just so colorful, so vibrant, so alive, that as a visitor, I can't help but be taken by the indelible vibe of the Land of Smiles. In short, I've been in a good mood for almost ten weeks straight. In shorter, I like it here.

More on Laos.

Sunday morning, I went to check out That Luong, which is that big Golden Temple thing you see in the pictures below. It's quite impressive. I just did the tourist thing, walked around, watched the monks do their thing (several of them were smoking cigarettes, which I found interesting), took some photos and just kind of reveled in the Laotian moment. I walked around there for maybe two hours, there's just so much to see. That came back to bite me in the ass later, because I took so much time there that by the time I wanted to make my next stop at Xieng Khuan, it was pouring rain. Real monsoon style too. Pretty nasty, especially when the only modes of transportation are motorcycle or tuk tuk.

Anyway, I finally left That Luong and decided to do my part to boost the Loatian Gross Domestic Product. Shit, or do I mean Gross National Product? No, I mean domestic. I was in the coutnry, after all. Whatever. My point is that I went to go buy some souvenirs.

I was looking at these little wooden sculptures when this guy comes up to me and says "Ice Cream? Ice Cream? Coconut, very good. Cold." I didn't really want an ice cream at the moment, so I shrugged him no and kept looking. Instead of leaving me alone, he decided to help out the local vendors. He asked if I wanted jewelry. I didn't, but I was looking, actually, to find something for my mom. He held up tihs hideous, hideous silver ring with a garish pink gem on it. The gem was the size of my freaking eyeball, and, well, pink. It was nasty. Nonetheless, he tells me to give him my hand. I do, just for shits and giggles, and with a moderate struggle, he got it on my finger.

"It doesn't fit."
"You buy?"
"My finger is turning pink."
"You buy?"
"No."

after which a three to five minute ordeal of taking the ring off my finger ensued. i appreciate the hustle, man, but what the hell am I going to do with a ring like that. do i look like fucking Liberace to you?

anyway, I bought a few things and headed back towards him. again, "Ice Cream?"

at this point, i figure what the hell. this guy is a pain in the ass, but he's grown on me. so i give him the 5000 kip (exchange rate in Laos: 10,600 Lao kip per One USD) and proceed to eat the block of coconut ice cream on a stick. Because he's grown on me, I'm okay with conversation.

"You want Beer Lao?"
"No."
"You want Coke?"
"No."
"You want Tuk-Tuk?"
"No."
"You want lady Lao?"
"What?" oops.
"Lady Lao. Very nice. Bam Bam. Lady Lao."
"Wow."
"Lady Lao. Very nice."
"I'll bet."
"You want?" Keep in mind, according to a posting outside the US Embassy (pictured below), it is illegal for a foreigner to have sex with a Lao National if the two are not married.
"You want?"
"No, I gotta go."

at which point he flagged down a tuk-tuk for me and I took off.

such is life in Laos, or any country afflicted with abject poverty. even the ice cream man is a pimp.

there's a snake out there this big?!?!

2006-06-05T13:40:00.000+07:00

there will be more lucid thoughts in Laos in future entries - particularly caffeine fueld entries. but i wanted to get this down.

i haven't had it in maybe a year/year and a half maybe, but back home i had this recurring dream - and i've had it since i was in high school - where i'm crawling through the hills back home. i don't know why i'm crawling, but i am, and the grass is tall and dried, maybe a foot and a half tall. the sky is a dull, suburban blue punctuated by occasional wandering clouds, ellipses foating by without a trail or a point.

i'm crawling frantically, faster, like some sort of escaped POW trying to get away from the sight of the guide towers. suddenly, i happen on a rattlesnake poised to strike. it's rattle is up and shaking. it's coiled up except for its head, exposing its fangs - and the rattle, which is deafening by this point. it strikes at my face - and i wake up right when it hits.

i've had that dream maybe 19-25 times in my life.

anyway, this morning i'm dreaming that i'm walking someplace out here- it looked like Cambodia or Laos. the dirt road was that burnt brick color with a flat brilliant green grass on both sides. i'm walking, and people are milling about, and i have to get someplace but there's a king cobra in the middle of the road. it's black and it's ugly and its head is up and it's in a defensive position. a old man walks up to me and says "king cobra. careful." but for some reason i have to get by. so i gingerly make my way around the snake, still keeping my feet on the road while maintaining eye contact with it.

naturally, you know what happens. it strikes - but instead of waking up right then, i remember falling and the snake flying by me. when i hit the ground, all the people - villagers, i dunno - they come to ask me if i'm okay. i say i'm okay and i didn't feel anything, but i look down at my side and it's covered in blood (not that a snake bite would do that) - like it slashed me with its body. anyway, the old man tells me i've been bit and he's yelling at everyone to get the anti-venom and i'm lying there motionless, feeling numbness take over from my limbs to my head.

then i wake up.

what the fuck.

It rubs the Laotian on its skin or else it gets the hose again.

2006-06-05T12:06:00.000+07:00

I don't know anything any more.

I don't know if the whirlwind has caught up to me, but I'm a complete zombie right now. Oh no wait, I know what it is. I got back to Bangkok this morning at 5:15 and got to work at 9:30. That's some good times right there. Nonetheless, I'm completely useless for the Siemens (heh heh) assignment I have so I'm just going to update this big, stupid, rambling blog.

For those of you paying attention, I went to Laos this weekend - the country with the auspicious distinction of having been bombed more times, per capita, than any other country in history (I'd footnote, but I forgot where I read that. For all I know, it's from Punisher War Journal 17). I don't know how to describe it other than quiet. Because man, it was quiet. I stayed right in the middle of town, in the guest house with one of the more "happening" bars in the city of Vientiane (The Dragon Lodge, thank you very much Lonely Planet), and the only places I could find open at 23:00 were internet cafes and a fucking brothel. Well, not officially a brothel, but a "cabaret" with a bunch of skanky chicks in mini skirts loitering outside under the pink and green neon. Not that I minded. It was nice to go to a city that was as close to the opposite of Bangkok as you can get. The tallest buildings were maybe four floors, the streets were semi-paved, and there was even a French flavor to much of the architecture and restaurants. It's cool anyway - I didn't really feel like partying, I just wanted to see a new place and renew my Visa.

So this is it. Laos. The land of a million elephants. The land of smiles (I saw several posters advertising Laos as the land of smiles, but I thought Thailand was the land of smiles. Do I sense the start of another decade of warfare in Southeast Asia? Surely there has to be a solution for who claims the moniker.

I gotta be honest - it was nice. The food was spicy, the people were friendly, and the main attraction - That Luong, was pretty awe-inspiring.

It was just so quiet there though. It such a strange vibe. I'd walk down the street and people would stop what they were doing to stare at me. It was uncomfrotable at first, but once you learn to smile in their direction, it's all good. I noticed they didn't do that to the farang that came up with me - so I thought maybe they thought I was some sort of Laotian made good who was coming back to his old stomping grounds. I'm not sure though, I noticed I was the only one getting stares. So much for just blending into the local community.

Saturday night when I was having a Beer Lao in my guest house, the dude next to me struck up a conversation. He was either Thai or Lao, and he was with his effeminate French buddy. He asked me where I was from and I told him, and he told me he was Lao. Since I was up and alert - more so than usual anyway - not to mention full of piss and vinegar, I asked him what there was to do in town. He just shrugged his shoulders and told me he just visited with his boyfriend on the weekends. He told me he was Lao, and I believed him because he was talking to the bartenders.

I noticed that he was wearing an orange "Long live the King" wristband, which is a Thai thing. Then I remembered that the people of northeastern Thailand - Issan, I believe - tended to be the poorest people in the country. Not only that, but they also spoke Lao over there. Anyway, many of them went down to Bangkok as a way to make money - and naturally, you know what they become. I don't mean to imply the guy was a gay go go dancer/prostitute, but it was a textbook case: wealthy (by their standards) farang takes a fancy on them while on vacation, they want to see the country and act like a savior, so they spring $20 or so dollars to take them to the place where they grew up, or just show them around the country. It was very cute, in a way, and they seemed very happy together. I read that many of the male prostitutes here aren't even gay, they just need the money. Anyway, they were my next door neighbors and thankfully didn't keep me up all night, but they were about the only friends I made on the trip other than my elephant souvenirs.

There's such a long history of death and despair in this region of the world - the Cambodian genocide, WW2, Vietnam, French Colonialism - I think that with Laos, along with Cambodia, just wants to enjoy the peace they have now. So they keep mellow, they keep their lives simple, and they welcome curious tourists with open arms. It's a tough life still, but it's a life in peace, so that's a start for them.

It places the Loatian in the basket.

2006-06-05T12:01:00.000+07:00

It places the Laotian in the basket.

2006-06-05T11:55:00.000+07:00

Put the fucking Laotian in the basket!

2006-06-05T11:48:00.000+07:00

You don't know what pain is!

2006-06-02T11:56:00.000+07:00

I just realized that even though my bus to Vientiane leaves Bangkok in about seven hours, I have no idea what the hell there is to do once I get there. I have the equivalent of $70 in my pocket and I refuse to spend any more than that. My last trips out of the city have been easy - they basically planned themselves. But Vientiane? All I know about it is that it's supposed to be laid back. I don't know of any tourist attractions, night life, wonders of the world, or party scenes. Shit, I don't even know where I'll be sleeping tomorrow night.

Fuck it.

When I went to Bratislava with Grant v2.0 and Thad in March, it was the same way. We didn't know what was there other than beautiful women that would undoubtedly try to entice us to their Russian Mafia experimental torture chambers. Come to think of it, people said the same thing: that it was laid back. And it was. I tell you, going someplace a bit simpler is pretty welcome to me, 12 hour bus rides be damned. Clean air and quiet do a body good. There's a window out by the elevators that I love looking out because it towers over South Bangkok and there's not many other buildings obstructing the view. The other night I walked out of the office and I thought, "Why did someone close the drapes on the view?" And then I realized that the grayish brown drapes were not drapes at all, but the thick smog cloud that had engulfed the 30th floor of Bangkok City Tower. Pretty nasty. Makes me wonder just how bad that rain is falling on my head, but oh well. That acid rain is made out of real acid. My eyes, the goggles do nothing!

Anyway.

This is Super Pussy. It's across Patpong 1 from "Pussy Collection" and a block down from the Thigh Bar (I took a video for y'all to post on my myspace, but it has some stupid Danish Women blocking me the whole time, so I'll get back to you on this) Holy crap, "Hanging Tough" just came on itunes radio. Awesome. Hold on while I find something else to listen to.

So no, I did not go into Super Pussy, nor did I go into Pussy Collection, the Thigh Bar, or any other of the sleaze factories. But I did realize something about my Cambodian "Masseuse" experience.

If you recall, this dude picked me up on his motorcycle and drove me across town for my alleged massage. I paid ten bucks at the desk. Now extrapolating what I've learned from my book, which is now my comprehensive resource on the southeast asian sex industry, of that ten bucks, three probably went to the dude. Seven went to the bar. That means it was up to me and girl #5 to set up rates for any sexual favors. Being that no sexual favors exchanged...er...hands, I suppose, she got nothing. So basically she massaged me for 45 minutes and stared at me awkwardly for another 15 and got nothing out of it. I should have given her like five bucks for her time. Poor gal. I just feel so bad for them these days. I'll be sure to rectify that in Laos.

This industry is crazy and I can't express how much it both bothers and fascinates me. When I was in Manila, we took a cab past a...dude, I don't even know what you call them - a Go-Go Bar, I suppose - and it was huge. It was like three floors, neon, the works. Lord only knows the carnal depravity that goes on within those walls, but I remember a few days later my dad and I were eating and this nasty ass Euro with rotting teeth and a fat gut was pawing all over this girl that looked no older than 17.

I don't know. I mean, paying for sex is paying for sex. Treating a human being like a commodity is always going to bother me. But there's this weird vibe with the dudes that you see walking around, like they're trying to be gentlemen, you know? I listen to them. They ask where the girls are from, they ask how their parents are and siblings are. And they do act like they are interested in the personal lives of the girls. And you wonder if it's a formality, or if it's to alleviate the guilt of being a John. It's a strange world out there.

One of these days I'm going to go into one of these bars and I'll pay to take a girl out. And I'll take her to the movies and to a nice restaurant and we'll chat, then I'll tell you what's what.

No I won't.

Nevermind. I dunno. See what happens when you care to educate yourself about the red light district you walk by every day? Weird shit. Weird, weird shit.

When your rooster crows at the break of dawn/Look out your window and I'll be gone

2006-06-01T16:18:00.000+07:00

Sadly, my insightful investigative piece on the modern day Patpong Market has been seriously truncated because of one reason and one reason alone: Rain. The rainy season in Thailand, according to whatever book I read before I got here, is supposedly three months starting in July. Nonetheless, my room has been consistenly illuminated by crackling lightning every night and the sharp tinges of a hard rain bouncing off of the tin roofs of the buildings and tenements below. A hardened street journalist I am not.

But to maintain street cred, I should tell you that I do have a round trip bus ticket to Vientane, the Capital of Laos - departure tomorrow at 19:00. In an added bonus to that journey, I picked this up off of Lonely Planet Laos' online page:

Areas of Concern for Travellers
Rural banditry, unexploded ordnance and sporadic violence in and around Vientiane are issues for travellers.

Check local information regarding the security of travel through the western portion of Rte 7 in Xieng Khuang Province between Muang Phu Khun and Phonsavan, and Rte 13 between Vang viang north to Muang Phu Khun through to south of Luang Prabang.

Though the Saisom Special Zone is slowly opening up, the 'secret city' of Long Cheng remains off limits.

Not that I expect any Laotian guerillas to try to topple my "VIP" Bus. If they were to rob the typical handful of Kao San Road backpackers, they might make out with a grand total of $55 and a handful of valuables (mostly digital cameras). I don't think a guerilla cost/benefit analysis would support such a difficult undertaking. I was surprised to find that, however, given Laos' reputation for being chliled out. Bandits though - that's tight.

The picture attached to today's entry is of Patpong 1. The Patpong Area is comprised of four main sois, or streets. They're really side streets connecting the major roads of Silom and Surawong (i live on the corner of Surawong and Charoen Krung, if anyone's going to be in the neighborhood this month), but they're mostly inhabited by foot traffic. There's Patpong 1 and 2, which are lined with nudie bars and filled with street vendors, Soi Thaniya, which is for Japanese only (and the most blatant of the massage parlor scene; on Patpongs 1 and 2, it's go-go bars with open doors showing off dozens and dozens of gals walking around in various stages of undress, and bars with closed doors presumably exhibiting sex shows and "other things" that might require a touch of privacy), and Soi Khatoey, I think (I'll check on it), which literally means "Ladyboy Street". Something for all of us.

As you can see, there's a vendor selling asics and pumas towards the right, and tables full of old farangs. Some of those tables are populated by the aforementioned slobs looking to score. The one in front of me was a few older English people on holiday just checking out what the place was and haggling over cheap souvenirs like knock off Gucci bags.

[Note to self: buy knock-off Gucci bag for Mother's Day]

I've never been to New Orleans, so I'm not sure if Bourbon Street is like this or what, but I think the difference between Patpong and Bourbon Street, other than the fake Diesel Jeans stands, is that anyone can score on Patpong. Screw the song and dance routine with a cute girl you see across the bar. Here, you just pay a bar to take a lady out then decide with her how much you're going to pay for sex.

According to the book - and what's interesting about how Cleo Odzer writes is the neo-feminist spin she puts on things - the women of Patpong are very skilled in not only milking men for every dollar they have, but they're skilled in making the man feel like a hero. They need money for this. They need money to send to mom. All they want is to build a house for their parents. Wow, that's a nice piece of jewelry. Who would ever buy it for me? And who am I to say they're lying? Theses people are coming from abject poverty. But it's that psychological manipulation they have is what's interesting.

When I was in college, I wrote a paper on Vladmir Nabokov's Lolita. I argued that even though Lolita was a child who was repeatedly being the subject of statutory rape, she learned to take control of her situation and manipulate Humbert. She pounced on his guardian complex, using it to her advantage. I think it's fascinating that these women, who many will pass an feel sorry for - and it's hard not to when you see the nasty ass looking slobs that are taking them out - are very, very underestimated.

But we'll see. I bought girl #44 out of the thigh bar for the weekend. She's coming to Laos with me as an interpreter.

You don't have to put on that red light

2006-05-30T16:22:00.000+07:00

Okay, so my week long expose into Bangkok's seedy underbelly got off to a rather poor start last night when I decided on staying home and watching the bootleg fifth season of the Sopranos I bought last week. This is why I'm in advertising and not investigative journalism. I can spend all day at myspace here and tell anyone that cares that i'm researching my demographic. I like that.

Allow me to digress.

There are several reasons I keep this blog. the first one was because hey - I'm a long way from home. I'm seeing what the world has to offer me, and I'm not sure if or when I'll ever get an opportunity to live so nomadically ever again. I'd like to immortalize it. Secondly, I didn't want to have to answer to periodic emails from different people saying, "How's Bangkok?' You don't want me cutting and pasting an old email to someone else, nor do you want me to be writing super long mass emails every few weeks. I get those once in awhile. They bug the hell out of me. There, I said it.

The third reason is that I like to try to keep my writing crisp and sharp. Personally, I only think there's two ways of doing that - reading well written books, and whetting the creative appetite by writing even when you don't feel like it. Also, if the only writing I ever got to do was like the shit I've had to write over the last four days, I might chop my hands off and go become a soccer player (because what else can you do when you have no hands?). Seroiusly, if you're in advertising and someone stops and asks you what the worst possible client/job you could possibly be assigned was, there's a high probability the answer would be "Microsoft Direct Mail." Alas. Guess what I'm working on.

I hate to think that something that bores the hell out of me to write is going out there, because if it's that horrible to write, I can only imagine what it's like to read. Granted, I wouldn't mind more creative liberties with the client. Like if they told me to write it in the voice of Bill Gates I'd put "You will use Microsoft. You will like it. Steve Jobs is a loser. I squash Steve Nash when it comes to rich white guys with bad hair. I rule, I rule, I rule. Boycott XTPRO." See, that would be fun, but it also might get Mister Gates' hired goons on my trail. So in the meantime, I'll follow orders and just ramble on here.

So the book I was talking about yesterday, "Patpong Sisters", brought something interesting to my attention. The people - especially the farang - that defend the red light district of Bangkok are usually pretty abhorrent individuals. They have fallacious justifications for objectifying women, are violent, have an appalling sense of superiority, and generally personify misogyny with glee. But one guy that owned a bar in the late eighties offered an interesting defense of the practice. I'm not going to quote it because this ain't a damn book report, but he said something along the lines of this being the only place where "Fat, ugly men who wouldn't get the time of day from an average looking woman back home might find a beautiful woman to fall in love with."

And I was thinking about that trade off because when it happens, it is possible that there's this weird convergence of misfortune lost that leads to a happily ever after. Think about it: a poor woman, sold into the sex industry from a young age, toughened on street smarts, addicted to amphetamines, used, and abused. An ugly, shy guy with a good heart but no social skills. The guy takes the woman out. He's nice, she's sweet. They get along. He treats her right, she likes having people buy her things (to put the power of the dollar in perspective here, I was told that 15,000 baht monthly is a pretty stong mid level salary here. That's about $375). He likes her because she's sweet. She likes him because he's good to her. He likes having a chance to prove what kind of man he is. He spoils her, protects her, saves her. She leaves the misery and abuse behind. She leaves poverty behind. They live happily ever after on a pristine white sand beach on Koh Samui. It happens. Human beings, I believe, are inherently good. And maybe some people need a place to show it.

Naturally, I sound naive. I assure you that I am not.

If you sit anywhere on Silom Road to eat, which I do almost every day, you will one out of every four couples being mixed farang-thai. And of those couples, you do wonder how many girls are bar girls. According to the book, a bar girl is an employee at one of the bars - waitress, dancer, whatever. If you like her, you pay the bar to have her for the night. What you do with her is up to your discretion - you either go out and see a movie and go shopping, or you take her to a hotel and do all sorts of unspeakable acts for added fees. Sadly, the latter I'm sure is far more common. So you see these couples and you wonder who's a bar girl and who isn't. Who's been rescued and who needs to be rescued. Who even wants to be rescued. It's this weird sexual cornucopia here - Sex isn't this tabboo thing, nor is it this sleazy thing. It's expanded. It's like a caricature of what it is in other countries. It's not commodified, it's inflated to ridiculous proportions. Girls will ask you if you've gotten a massage yet and then just giggle away like it's expected, not revolting. The culture has a strange relationship with sex that I can't really grasp, kinda why I bought this book. But we'll see. I'll go get a beer there tonight and take some pictures.

PS I plan on going to Laos on Friday. If anyone wants a child or anything, let me know. I already promised one to my friend Anne.

As Thai as Rambutan/Mangosteen Pie

2006-05-29T16:24:00.000+07:00

the purpose of this picture is twofold. one, it's to show y'all what rambutans (left) and mangsteen (right) look like. in both cases, you peel the skin off and devour. rambutans are kid of like lychee, but not as tasty. the mangosteen, on the other hand, is a sour-ish and refreshing fruit full of thai antioxidants. i don't know how to describe it in any other words than it's the second greatest fruit this planet has ever seen, right behind elton john. bada bing!

the second is to show all of you what i look like these days. i took this picture after going grocery shopping. that's not a particularly interesting fact, but the contents of my non-pictured excursion are.

a year ago, when i was in the philippines with my dad, it didn't take me long to be offended by advertising. it didn't offend me the way ads back home do - they weren't overtly sexual, moronic, condescending, or misogynic - I was just offended by a large billboard for Lux Whitening Soap that said something along the lines of "White is Beautiful."

I don't know if America is the only country in the world where it's considered more attractive to be of darker complexion - but here in Asia, it's quite the opposite. Lighter skin means beauty becuase it implies refinement. Darker people, like yours truly, tend to be seen as uglier because they're less refined - more savage, if you will - and not part of the newer, richer, modern society.

Whatever. It is what it is.

Anyway, seeing all of these whitening products always left me a bit nonplussed, if you will, although pissed off might be a more apt description. Nonetheless, when I was looking for soap, my choices were between Lux Whitening Soap and Imperial Leather normal soap. Just for the hell of it, I bought the former. Then I bought Nivea Men's Whitening Face Wash. Then I bought Jergen's Skin Whitening Moisturizer. Then for good measure, I bought a giant bag of cotton balls and ate them.

Either way, no I am not trying to become a white person (although I would like to photoshop my skin white to see what the hell that would look like). I just was looking for a way to amuse myself because Harley Davidson and the Fucking Marloboro Man was on tv again. So that was it. We'll see if it works. And if one of you come to pick me up at the airport and fidn a goofy looking guy wearing my clothes and with all my luggage, think twice. Think twice.

Red Light, Green Light 123

2006-05-29T12:09:00.000+07:00

So some genius decided that to speed up the renovation at my service apartment that it would be a great idea to not only work on rooms 402 and 404 on the weekend, but also to start drilling, pounding, and hamering at eight fucking thirty in the morning. naturally, i'm in room 403. I'm not one to be confrontational unless I have to be, but I did have to tell the manager at the old Win Long Place that the current situation of not letting this spoiled American sleep in like the baby he is was completely unacceptable. He apologized and told them to start at ten on weekends from now on, which is just peachy with me. unfortunately, he did not give me his young daughter for retribution nor did he find a way to compensate me for lost beauty sleep.

I bring that story up because at about four in the afternoon yesterday I was walking around like a zombie, looking for a place to lay my weary head. Then I had a brilliant idea to go to a massage parlor and drop four bucks for an hour of lying down someplace quiet while having warm baby oil rubbed all over my back. I figured I actually would fall asleep in the process, and that was unbelievably inviting after a long week of work punctuated by a few nights of drinking.

Knowing what I know, and having the common sense to stay away from places that look shady, I settled on this place right by my pad. It was well lit, and I peeked in and an old woman was massaging another old woman's feet by the front door. Add that to the fact that there was no TV inside, just some plants and fans, and I had found my nap place. safe. clean. devoid of fat, ugly slobbish white men.

Being that I was pretty beat from the rude awakening and my walking around all day looking for something to do, I didn't feel the need to pay for two hours of having a woman beat the hell out of me, so I opted to skip the Thai Massage (although they are surprisingly invigorating once your bones heal) and try an oil massage.

So I'm led to this back room - and like I said, the place was plenty classy - where I'm made to change into a towel. And it's fine. It's very, very relaxing. We made some small talk, as is the custom, and then I just kind of zoned out and listened to the ceiling fan. It was incredibly relaxing. I only paid for an hour, but about 45 minutes into it, she decided to restart the conversation.

-You get Thai massage?
-Yes, but not today. I want to relax. Thai Massages hurt.
-Full body? Two hour?
-Yes.
-You get shoulder massage?
-Yes, those are nice. I got one after a haircut once.
-You get special massage?
-...
-You no like?
-Oh Jesus.
-Special Massage. Very relaxing (giggles).
-Um. No. I've never gotten one.
-(laughs) You not interested?
-No, it's not really my thing.
-You try sometime, it relax you. You want?
-Um...not today.
-(laughs)

Talk about awkward.

So this weekend I bought this book called "Patpong Sisters" by Cleo Odzer. Odzer was a graduate anthropology student for New York School of Social Research or something like that who decided to write her dissertation on the prostitutes of Bangkok, particularly the women of the infamous Patpong area. Her experience was somewhat relateable, being that she also is American, and an outsider looking in despite the willing accomodation and friendliness of some of the locals. She seemed to be naturally inquisitive, and you all know I enjoy walking the alleys of the red light district when I'm bored.

Patpong Market, which I've never really written about, became the Bangkok Red Light District in the 1970's for American GI's on R and R from the Vietnam War. This is probably the place where Thailand got the less flattering parts of its reputation. Bars became blowjob bars. Shows turned into Ping-Pong Shows. Massage Parlors become "Massage" parlors. Today, there are plenty of other areas in Bangkok to be solicited by the world's oldest profession, but Patpong still enjoys the luxury of its infamous reputation. It's also become sight of one of the better night markets in the city, a place where you can buy fake rolexes, adidas, LaCoste, polo, dieseld jeans, gucci, and luis vuitton gear - basically what y'all are going to be seeing me wearing for the next three years. You can also get penis shaped lighters, ninja stars, game boy games, bootlegs dvd's and cd's and such stellar, classy t-shirts as "Don't Hate me Because I'm Awesome" (girl sizes only, sad to say) and "Give me a blowjob and I'll buy you a sandwich, you fat bitch."

Nice.

Basically, I walk by this area every single day. It's just a few minutes away from my work - which makes you wonder if it was placed there because of its proximity to the high class business world or vice versa - and there's free wifi at the coffee world there. That's why I bought the book. i wanted to be educated on the place I live. So this week's blog is going to be dedicated to the seedy nightlife of Bangkok - watched from a relatively safe distance.

The picture above is of Patpong 1 I took at lunch today - one in the afternoon. Pretty unassuming, eh?

"Think of me when you're having the best sex of your life."

2006-05-22T17:33:00.000+07:00

If you ever want to see the definition of awkwardness, all you have to do is drop everything and move to Bangkok to come intern at an international conglomerate of an ad agency. Then all you have to do is sit on your hands all day until a very cute and innocent 22 year old account planner comes up to you to brief you on your latest client, which happens to be Durex Latex Condoms. Then you just watch her explain the product, go over the brief that she wrote, watch her hand draw diagrams on the difference between regular condoms and new anatomically correct latex condoms, and explain that the selling points are the "ease of transition from foreplay to sex" and the "all natural, condomless sensation."

Oh man, it's rich.

This is much better than the time in Prague where I wrote 251 names for herbal teas or whatever the hell it was, only to find out the next day that they were all useless (Curse you, Leon. Curse you, David Spade). It's much better because, despite the planner's incredible professionalism, the world may have shifted while she tried to explain this to me from the pressure built up in my face trying to suppress laughter. And I'm the one that comes off as a child. Shit, didn't I just turn 27?

Anyway, I submit this assignment to you, dear readers - not only because I love shirking my responsibilities (especially in the world of unpaid internships), but because you know I love some good blog interaction. If any of you turn in a name (I'm going to turn in everything, they asked for ten. why their expectations for me are set so low is beyond me), that is approved and used by the Durex corporation, I will personally give you a box of the Durex anatomically correct condoms that you name for use as however you see fit, be it with Cambodian hookers, Thai hookers, or water balloon launching.

Hm. I got this brief like an hour ago and all I've done is post this contest on here and my fantasy baseball message board. Maybe I should try to get "on the ball."

hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaahahaaha

Second best pun ever. Best pun ever?

2000: The rapper "Big Pun" dies an untimely death due to heart disease (ham sandwich).
My friend Marc: "Dude, Big Pun died. It's like God said 'No Pun intended.'"

still making me laugh six years later.

for a "head" start on the condom names. Keep in mind the selling points, please. Ease of putting them on, and the all natural sexy feeling.

You have selected "Regicide." If you know the name of the King or Queen being murdered, press one now.

2006-05-22T10:54:00.000+07:00

This is attempt number two of writing about how reality sucks. The last one didn't work out so much, since all I talked about was how much "Solo" sucks.

Anyway, being out and about here in the boulevard of the universe has made me realize just how little I know and how much I want to interact with the international community. So I had this plan to go home, try to start a career, work at High Tech Burrito in the interim - and if I was still career-less come the end of the year, go back on the road and see other parts of the world. More remote parts - more jungle, more desert, more shit underwater, icebergs, penguins, marine iguanas, dragons, elves, gnomes, eskimos. Brazil, China, India, Argentina, Komodo Island, Peru, Egypt, Zaire, South Africa. Oh yes. I had it all planned out. It was beautiful. I think my subconscious was even plotting ways to sabotage my career search so I could follow.

But then, of course, a little beast named the student loan fairy popped up next to my right ear and reminded me that starting in September, I have a pretty sizable five figure debt I need to start repaying to the government. Naturally, a little beast named the run for your life fairy popped up next to my left ear and told me to tell them all to screw off and go live in a shack in Madagascar. I'll probably have to settle for something in the middle. Damn. Stupid brain.

Speaking of reality, I also was planning on making my next Visa run either this weekend or next. Last weekend when I was in Kanchanburi, one of the guides pointed to the mountains off on the not too distant horizon and said, "Over there - that's Myanmar." And I thought, damn - that's pretty close. Probably pretty easy to get to also.

Last month when I was coming back from Koh Tao, I met this Canadian law student on the bus. We talked for a few hours and he told me that he had gone to Myanmar for his Visa a bit before that. He said it was very odd, that there were no bank machines, the whole city was very quiet (Rangoon, aka Yangon, I believe), and that developed Western Countries frown on their citizens partaking in the tourist industry in the country.

So we got to talking and apparently Myanmar has a short history of oppression and totalitarianism. I don't know, I was kind of skeptical - I would love to see Cuba, and that's not frowned upon by the American Government, it's forbidden. Not to mention the fact that I'm a bit cynical with the current administration, so I just kind of want to go where I want to go.

But then I'm watching BBC News the other night and they have a foreign correspondent trekking through the Burmese jungle (Myanmar = Burma), interviewing natives who were apparent victims of some government ordered genocide. One woman walked four miles with three kids (one newborn) to the closest village after her husband was tied up in a field and left to lie there and die over the course of a week. There's some pretty awful shit going on over there, and while I personally wouldn't worry about being shot or killed - they have no beef with me, after all - the idea of my dollars going to the government that sponsors such atrocities does leave a foul taste in my mouth, the irony of my student loan payments going to the Bush Administration (kinda) notwithstanding. Hence...well, hence I think unfortunately I might have to pass on Myanmar.

It's recommended that if you must go, not to give money to any government owned stores - buy souvenirs and food from the people on the streets, etc. I would love to go and check it out, but I'm not quite sure if there's a way to go where I'd feel comfortable spending my money - not alone, anyway. If one of you p***ies back home had actually made good on your empty promises to come out and adventure seek with me, maybe we could have made something happen, but from the looks of it, the smart thing to do would be to fly to Laos for a night or two before heading back (Laotian food = best food ever).

Still, nobody ever accused me of always doing the smart thing.

Um...someone talk me out of this.

"Reality's a bitch, and I heard that she bites."

2006-05-18T18:15:00.000+07:00

I think I might be clairvoyant. I go home last night after a typical 11-hour day at the office, flirt with the receptionist, take off all my clothes, oh no wait, I go upstairs first, then I take off all my clothes, cover myself with Thai baby powder, pop the TV on to the Stars Network, and what is on? “Solo” starring Mario Van Peebles, of course.

The weird thing about the movie is, other than my mentioning it yesterday in reference to someone that was not in it, was that Hollywood Heartthrob and Oscar Winner Adrien Brody was in it starring as the scientist and creator of Solo (and of course the unwitting architect of the one flaw of the ultimate killing machine: the sensitive side).

Anyway, the point of this is to tell all of you loyal blog readers, who are obviously weaving through the fast lane of the superhunk highway, that if you ever run into Adrien Brody, you need to tell him for me, “Dude, I loved you in ‘Solo’.” I’m certain that he would disavow any knowledge of such a film. Then you’d have to remind him of his role in it by quoting his character heavily – “Solo wouldn’t do that, sir. Solo would never kill innocent people!” It would be awesome. If he asks you if you've ever seen "The Pianist", just say "yeah, but that sucked."

If any of you actually have seen “Solo”, well, then, you’ll have to comment here and tell me why. The only reason I knew of such a crappy action flick is that I used to work in an equally crappy video store, and Solo was on the new releases shelf for probably two years. The line on the box was "Part man. Part machine. Total weapon. Prepare to go Solo!" Nothing beats a well-placed exclamation mark!

!!!

Okay, you know what, I was planning on writing about travelling and making a vow to go back on the road if I didn’t have a career by this December – hence the title of today’s entry – but I’d rather talk about this movie. I just accessed the Solo page on imdb.com and found this review by Terence Allen of Atlanta, Georgia. It's titled "One of the worst movies ever made".

"Even the fact that I saw this movie at a free sneak review doesn't make up for the hour plus that I lost watching this horrible dreck [sic] of a movie. Mario van Peebles had a movie to remember in New Jack city, and he has a movie to forget in Solo. Where do I start? The plot is horrendous, the action is silly, the acting is campy, and the whole movie adds up to such a bad experience that it isn't even worth renting, much less buying or watching it on cable. Any cable station that shows this movie ought to give the viewers discounts on their cable bill. Definitely a contender for worst movie ever made. Definitely the worst movie of anyone who acted, wrote, produced, directed, or did FX for it."

I'm sure there are far more incendiary criticisms of movies even worse than Solo on the IMDB. But the fact that he brought up "New Jack City" is awesome. H-U-S-T-L-E-R Hustler.

Here's some sample Solo dialogue. It's a spoiler, so if you plan on renting this movie this weekend, skip the rest:

Improved Solo: [to Solo thinking he *was* dying] You ceased to function!
Solo: No, I bluffed!

Wow.

The one good thing Solo has going for it is that the bad guy from Die Hard 2 also is the bad guy in this. He plays a paramilitary commando that’s gone bad because of years of intense combat. Yes, in both movies. I’m sure he’ll be in the upcoming prequel to the Predator Series co-starring Puff Daddy, Master P, Jesse Ventura, and Ted Dibiase ('The Million Dollar Man'). And I'm sure one of them will become Governor of Ohio or something. Good Lord.

Can you see now why I made that post about a week ago on the systematic mental oppression the West imposes on the East? Just because us Asians perfected the K-Car and the solar powered calculator the white man has to set us back with movies like this piece of crap and that f***ing god awful “You’re Beautiful” song that I hear 90 times a day.

Oh well. At least the Da Vinci Code is out. Best book ever for those of us that read one book every nine years. I’ve spent $760 on supplementary reading material and have a trip planned to go see The Last Supper next summer. Thank you, Dan Brown.

Okay, I shouldn’t hate. I haven’t read the Da Vinci Code. I’ll read it this weekend and get back to you. I swear I think the airport has bookstores devoted to just selling that book. It’s the only book I’ve seen people reading on planes for the past two years. Well, that and Harry Potter.

On a related note, Audrey Tatou is hot.

dude I loved you in "Malibu's Most Wanted"

2006-05-18T11:28:00.000+07:00

in lieu of your regularly scheduled blogpost, today's installment is just going to be this picture of an old friend of mine dancing with "House on Haunted Hill" superstar/ Hollywood Heartthrob Taye Diggs someplace in New York City's lower east side last weekend. impressive. most impressive.

contrary to popular (my) belief, this guy did not play the super-soldier cyborg title character of the film "Solo". that was Mario Van Peebles.

does that make me racist?

happy birthday, N-Dogg. way to represent.

That dog has a fluffy tail. Here, fluff.

2006-05-15T23:19:00.000+07:00

So I was sitting at a bus stop in the middle of Kanchanaburi, Thailand the other day when the van driver that had taken me, an Aussie, and two Korean dudes out there kept taking my picture. I saw it in the corner of my eye at first. I thought, sure, he's taking pictures of all of us for their website or something. Then I saw him shift to crop everyone else out of the picture. Then I thought okay this is weird. Then he did it again, and I was about to tell him to piss off, but then he just walked up to me, held in in front of my face, and clicked. And as I said, "you mind telling me why you're doing that, you fa-", he walked off.

Later that evening, I walked into the grounds for my accommodations for the evening when two old women, three young ones, and about four guys nodded in unison at the mere sight of me. After standing confused amidst a flurry of excited Thai conversation, I was able to ascertain that their friend, another employee at Kitti Rafts Kanchanaburi, apparently was my identical twin.

You can imagine the anticipation I felt upon hearing I could finally meet my twin brother and find out the truth about my parents smuggling me out of Cambodia years ago. They just raised me Filipino so that the Reagan administration wouldn't blacklist me. Unfortunately, he never showed. So his laziness, flakiness, and tendency to just be forgotten certainly mirrors my tendencies.

Speaking of my being Cambodian, I've decided that when backpacker Eric is in effect, he's Cambodian. I wrap a kharva around my head (the traditional Khmer scarf), put on a pair of sunglasses, and keep to myself. It's quite menacing. But when corporate Eric is out, he's American. Offensive, domineering, and perverse. It's just better that way. Unfortunately, I'm not so sure how much time the latter has. I was sitting in a meeting earlier today, listening to people talk about God knows what for about and hour and a half, and I just started laughing to myself. It was just an odd situation, you see, sitting in a room, clueless as to what everyone's saying. Then I pictured what I must have looked like, sitting there, trying to look engaged and intelligent, and I just started giggling. That wasn't that bad though. Then I kept thinking and I realized that in Prague, things weren't really that much different. Then I realized that since 2006 started, probably 75% of the conversation around me has been in a foreign tongue. Of that 75%, I probably understood 1%. That means I've understood...well, I need a pencil to figure this math out, but very little of what the world around me has been talking about for five months now. That's amazing. Then I had to literally bite my tongue and cover my mouth because I found such absurdity - and profundity - hilarious. I really am just a child now. A child of the world. It's quite wonderful, I must admit.

Also, I think my mind is about 70% of what it was 24 hours ago because they painted the room down the hall and I was smelling paint fumes all night.

So I just spent the rest of the Thai portion of the meeting trying to link Kevin Bacon to Keanu Reeves in as few links as possible. I went with
Kevin Bacon - White Water Summer - Sean Astin
Sean Astin - The Goonies - Joe Pantoliano
Joe Pantoliano - The Matrix - Keanu Reeves

I'm still slowly drifting in to madness, as you can see, much like Captain Marlow as he descends deeper into the jungle in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. But it's not so bad now. I think the maudlin, melodramatic, manic Eric of the three previous posts is no more, and all I had to do to get rid of him was go to the site of one of the worst atrocities of the previous century - the Bridge on River Kwai. I mean yeah, it's full of ghosts, bones, death, and its reputation is built on the infamy of human despair, but it really is quite beautiful over there.

As far as maudlin, melodramatic, manic Eric - we'll just call him Emo for now - he comes out every once in awhile. Just a year ago I remember writing a bitchy email to my friend wondering what direction my life was going. I had friends having babies, getting married, buying houses, and I was still showing up to parties (albeit usually with one of those friends who was married and with child) with forties in both hands. And you know what I've learned? I've learned to make an agreement with the world. And the world has said it's going to show me a good time if I just shut the hell up and stop asking questions that have no answers.

Done.

I know it sounds trite, but we could always tour the bridges of Madison County...

2006-05-15T23:15:00.000+07:00

Under the Bridge Downtown is where the Japanese killed some dudes

2006-05-15T23:12:00.000+07:00

Doctor Phil's dead, he's locked in my basement.

2006-05-12T11:52:00.000+07:00

You know what my last entry reminded me of was Go Ask Alice, that classic piece of ninth grade literature comprised of an actual girl’s diary as she slowly descends from an innocent teenager into a drug addicted street thug. It was assigned, I’m assuming, to be a deterrent to adolescent experimentation with recreational narcotics, but it’s not without its literary merit.

I’m just saying it reminded me of that. I’m not really going to become a Cambodian landmine sniffer, nor am I going to chronic(what!)le my descent into addiction of anything, unless it’s an addiction to travel. It just seemed like what I wrote earlier could very easily have been the documentation of a major life turning point. In reality, it probably was a Thai Whiskey induced stupor exacerbated by watching half of a hell of an emotionally draining drama, but you never know. Hell, I’m writing this at 2:11AM with a stomach churning from delicious, delicious Lao food.

I’ve been thinking about myself much more than usual lately. I think it all started with the visit to the aforementioned Hollywood Massage. I was sitting back thinking what the fuck motivated me to end up in a place like that. Sure, it was curiosity. Sure, I wanted the story to tell. Sure, I did honestly want a massage. But I’m thinking psycho-sexually, there were underlying reasons.

I was looking back at all the girls I’ve been involved with, ever. And no, I’ve never dated a Cambodian prostitute (to my knowledge). My dating history is limited at best, although if you want to see my junior prom date, her myspace page can be found at www.myspace.com/tara8677. I never dated her, I just thought finding her on the internet was funny. She yelled at me on the first day of 12th grade in a crowded hallway for egging her house. The strange thing was, I didn’t egg her house. I should offer a reward to this unsolved mystery now that I have the power of the internet at my fingertips. If anyone knows who egged this girl’s house in September of 1996, please contact me. I’d like to buy you a cup of coffee. I’m getting way off point here, but as I was putting the period at the end of the “what? I didn’t egg your house” she yelled “DON’T LIE, MY SISTER SAW YOU!”

Unless I have a Tyler Durden alter ego, well, she was lying about that. Keep in mind that in Danville, California, not many people look like me.

Anyway…god, how do I get so hopelessly off topic? Where the F was I?

Oh yes, Eric’s psychological map.

What makes a perfectly normal, reasonably sane person go to a prostitute? Does that even happen? Does normalcy exist? Is prostitution really that aberrant? What’s more aberrant, going to a prostitute and paying for sex, or going to one and paying for no sex?

For the sake of continuing this rambling idiocy, let’s just say that no matter how sex starved a person is (which I am not, thanks to your moms), yes. Yes, going to a prostitute is outside of the mean of normal behavior. And let’s just say the typical motivation is lack of sex. I think that’s the basic foundation of this analysis.

So the question is, why would I, Eric Molina, being of sound mind and body, go to an alleged massage parlor with no intentions whatsoever of paying for anything further than a traditional Khmer massage, knowing full well that the true function of the establishment was the exchange of sex for money? Why? Who the hell does that?

That’s the point of this entry. I do. I do that. Well, technically I did it once. So let me rephrase.

I have. I have done that.

Like I said, I was thinking of all the girls I’ve ever been involved with, and to an extent, I think that they all have had previous experiences with boyfriends who weren’t so nice to them. Cheating, dishonesty, whatever. And don’t think for one second I’m a perfect boyfriend, I’m far from perfect in any capacity, except for my ability to play “Jane Says” on guitar spot on. And yes, that song is two chords. But that has been a consistency, and I would hope that given the opportunity to date someone with a pattern like that, I wouldn’t turn out to be the same thing. I don’t know, you’ll have to ask my ex girlfriend that, but I’m not putting her myspace page up.

Seriously now, I got to wondering, and I came to the conclusion that it could be that this is some sort of subconscious desire to be the “good guy.” You know, the Knight in Shining Armor. The Savior, the über boyfriend, the dream guy that was right in front of you the whole time, like Ducky in 16 Candles. Holy shit, I compared myself to Ducky. Prank caller! Prank caller! Look, this is all theoretical. Consciously, I would never cop to that and before last weekend, I wouldn’t even have given the idea of wanting to be seen as the good guy a second thought. I’m just saying the fact that I went to a freaking Cambodian whorehouse is kind of making me examine myself and where I am in the world. I don’t know why such a perception would appeal to me. Chivalry is dead, isn’t it? Plus, I don’t want to be appreciated for being some kind of archetype. I want to be appreciated for being me.

This is so painfully emo I want to shoot myself. But I’m a blogger so this was inevitable too. Next up: lyrics to my favorite Toad the Wet Sprocket song.

Another theory is that I just want to be needed. This, of course, is a subconscious thing also despite the fact that I just uttered it. Hell, I didn’t just utter it, I announced it to the entire world. But again, that’s not something I can feel. It’s not palpable. If it is the reason, it’s buried underneath excuses of being curious and wanting the story to tell. But the fact is that I had a power over her – the power of money. She is obviously an underprivileged girl, because I don’t care if it is the world’s oldest profession, it’s counterintuitive to become a hooker, that goes against the laws of nature of selecting a suitable and optimal mate. It’s also aberrant. It deviates from the norm.

So the hooker needs money. I have money. I go to hooker. I give money. I fulfill need. And that’s really what I want. There are no purely selfless actions. This was to feel needed and to come through when the opportunity arrives. Right? Right Doctor Ruth?

Shit.

I’m opening way too many cans of worms here. They’re scattered all over my hardwood floor, looking desperately for something to burrow into, stacking and coiling themselves in the corner for shade and cooler temperatures. Worms. Fucking worms everywhere.

I got bugs. Bugs on my skin.

Okay. Um…

Okay.

Conclusive? No. Did it need to be? Not at all. I’m just thinking aloud. Cathartic? Not really. Self-indulgent? Hell yes. Do I need help? Nah. I don’t think so.

Hey, you wander the world long enough, maybe eventually you’ll start learning about yourself. And even that can be interesting. Or frightening. Or both.

But there are no absolutes. It’s just that. It is what it is.

Existential Crisis part 34 of 94,521

2006-05-11T17:36:00.000+07:00

I didn’t see “The Motorcycle Diaries” but I did see the preview.

And I remember there’s this shot of the young Che Guevara and his friend, the Jim Messina of revolutionaries, riding through some remote corner of South America, and as they pass this scene of intense and horrifying poverty, they wear these looks of complete shock. You can just tell, you can just see that this is an indelible image that is being burned into their minds, and it’s not so much a formative experience so much as it is something completely and totally transformative.

The other day I bought the HBO adaptation of Tony Kushner’s “Angels in America” play off the street. It’s a seven hour epic, and for those of you that don’t know the story, well, I couldn’t possibly encapsulate it here, but among other things, it’s about AIDS, love, death, homosexuality, religion, and America in the mid 1980's.

I read it in college, I think about five years ago. I remember wishing that I had been able to see it performed onstage, but we were maybe four years too late. It won the Pulitzer, I believe, and the TV adaptation has Meryl Streep, Al Pacino, and some other heavy hitters in it. I think as a work of art in the modern era, it’s as close to a masterpiece as we’ve seen in a long time. IMHO. Jesus, I’ve had a blog for five months and that’s my first lame internet abbreviation.

imho lol omg UAE OPEC NATO

sorry.

Either way, these are not two disparate anecdotes from a rambling, crumbling mind. The rambling, crumbling mind is definitely rambling and crumbling, but these two things are related. And it's because...drumroll please...

I just feel as though I don’t know anything any more.

I’m in a heightened emotional state here. It’s not loneliness. It’s not homesickness. It’s not culture shock. It’s none of that. It’s just this weird feeling that this world is a giant place and I’m not really part of it. Like there’s this disconnectedness I feel when I’m in my room or office. I need more meaning. This is going to sound pretty lame, but I got home last night at like one in the morning and I turned on VH1 and the video for Eminem’s “When I’m Gone” was on. I’ve never even heard that song before, so I watched it and found it oddly compelling.

Here you have this very angry, troubled man who was angry and troubled before the weight of fame came along and threw everything for a loop. No matter what your opinion on Eminem is, I think you would agree with me that assuming that his ascent and status were probably disconcerting to him. And that’s it – I’m disconcerted. Totally disconcerted.

But anyway I was watching this video and it’s a pretty nice song about wrestling between going out and making a living and balancing that with raising a daughter. And I think what struck me is that raising his daughter into this world has now become his one point, his one motivation. You know what I mean? Like he has a meaning. He has a purpose.

And I sit in this cozy, comfy, air conditioned office 30 floors above the bustling Bangkok street and there's this feeling that shit man, the things I've seen now, the books I've read, the songs I hear, there's always a point to everything. And this is not going to be another woe is me goth blog, even though I did warn you yesterday that emo blogs were forthcoming. But dude. All of a sudden I'm getting this overwhelming feeling that I should be doing something bigger. Something better. Something meaningful. I don't want to look back at my life 60 years from now and wonder what I gave to the world. I don't want to think that I could have done more, or perhaps worse yet, that I should have done more.

All these weird emotions are coming out because of the poverty of Cambodia. Because of the saddened face of a "masseuse" claiming to be 19. Because I watched a play that was so brilliant and so powerful and about something. Because I can watch a music video of one of the most reviled (and go figure, also one of the most popular - and for the record, i like eminem), superstars on the planet and envy the meaning he has attached to his life.

Maybe I should just go have a baby. It can be half Thai.

I dunno, dudes. It's a weird thing. I guess hell, I am travelling the globe. I am seeing new things. And you're supposed to grow in that time. I am not sure if you ever get to the point where you stop growing, but I guess I did think that any profound growth was behind me. Maybe it's not. And maybe you'll never hear from me again because I went back to Cambodia to be a land mine scout.

It's a mad, mad, mad world. And that can be kind of frustrating sometimes.

Told you I was going into emo mode.

Hey, another day off. Happy Buddhist Lent, everyone.

And if someone can explain to me why my blog profile has gotten 20 new views in the last 12 hours, I would appreciate it. It's kind of creepy.

If I had a million dollars, I would buy you a fur coat (But not a real fur coat, that's cruel)

2006-05-10T14:26:00.000+07:00

There’s this classic scene in “Office Space” where the main character asks his neighbor what he would do if he had a million dollars. Without hesitation, his neighbor replies, “I’ll tell you what I’d do. Two chicks at the same time.”

Naturally, that wasn’t precisely the answer he was looking for. He was doing an exercise where he wants to find out what a person would do if they were in the position to act without consequence – if money was no longer a factor in how a person functioned on a daily basis. It was supposed to indicate what people truly want to do with themselves, where a person belongs. It’s total bullshit career planning crap that a guidance counselor will give you, but it does raise an interesting discussion.

Say I was to win the lottery tomorrow. I’d probably just keep moving. Keep travelling, seeing different things, meeting new people, pushing away from roads and trails, just to see what’s out there. I spent an hour last night walking through the back alleys of Bangkok’s red light district. All I saw was a bunch of gay bars and a huge rat that didn’t even blink when I walked by it. That was disgusting. The rat, that is. It's weird though. Like I was trying to get lost. I was trying to find something, anything, I don't know. Something to write home about.

And now I’ve come to the conclusion that I want to stay away from home until I actually feel homesick.

People ask me if I’m homesick, and I always give the same answer: I miss the food. I miss In-N-Out Burger, buffalo wings, Whole Foods, Fat Slice, Top Dog, El Farolito, the Jasmine Tea House, Berkeley Bowl, Christopher’s, Super Subs, Zachary’s, Buffalo Wild Wings, Ben Wah, Wing Nights at Blue Light, Pete’s Brass Rail Turkey Dips, French Dips, L & L Mac Salads, anything with ranch, Italian Beef Subs, garlic fries, crispy tacos from Cactus, and, in a new addition today, Doritos.

That’s what I miss. No offense, friends, family, and loved ones. I keep you all in mind at all times.

Oh man, I just made myself hungry. Man, I’m all over the place with this post.

Originally, the point of the introduction to this rambling incoherence is that I know what I’d do with a million dollars. I’d continue to travel – like I said, until I get homesick. Who knows how long that would be - probaby at least a year total. If I were to start here, I’d go west and loop from Myanmar to India to China to Vietnam to Laos back through Thailand, stopping in Chiang Mai, Chiang Rai, and Koh Chaang. Then I’d head south through Malaysia, stop and see Komodo Dragons on Komodo Island, then move West. I’d stop in Madagascar, Egypt, Morocco, Zaire, South Africa. I’d fly up to Israel, wing through Barcelona, then go straight to Brazil. I’d swoop down through Argentina, go touch Antarctica, come back up through Peru and Ecuador, say hi to the Galapagos, then go up through Belize, cruise through Cuba, and then find my way back home.

Then I’d take my money, go to culinary school and open up my own restaurant, with my dog on one side and my steady flow of alcoholic friends keeping me in business through the lean years.

That’s what I’d do.

Yeah, for awhile now I’ve been saying that if I was to win the lottery I’d buy a dog and then go to culinary school. I love to cook. I took a Thai cooking class a few weeks ago. I learned how to make four dishes, all but one being very, very simple. It was a four course meal, so it was huge, but the best part was that the chef would show me how to do it, then I'd follow his lead. While I was making it, they'd cook what the chef made and serve it to me. So I basically got to eat everything twice - the cook's version and mine. Spring Rolls, Tom Khlong (a seafood soup), roasted duck, and some steamed chicken wrapped in banana leaves. Oh my god, it was good. Bangkok is truly a great, great city to eat in. On par with Chicago. Better than Chicago.

I'm feeling very disconnected with the world right now. I think some seriously emo posts are forthcoming. Be forewarned.

The (Western) World is a Vampire

2006-05-09T17:10:00.000+07:00

Coming from a school as anti-American, anti-family, and anti-freedom as the University of California at Berkeley is, I’ve heard plenty of pedantic rants railing against America and America’s place in the world and how it urgently needs to bugger off. Now I’m not going to get too political here, because there are about 7.4 million blogs out there where a bunch of blowhards want to bitch about how they’re right and the other guy isn’t just wrong, he’s an idiot. I’ll leave that kind of thing to people with the degrees. Me, I have an English degree, so I’ll just stick to the “spontaneous strings of beautiful words” as the lameass that gave my college graduation speech put it. Damn, English majors are annoying.

Anyway, prior to my trips through Central/Eastern Europe and Southeast Asia, my world travel had been limited in the last decade to two other third world/developing countries: Mexico and the homeland, aka the Philippines.

(also, this Brit I sat next to on the bus ride home asked me where the term “third world” was coined, and if there was, accordingly, a second world. Etymology experts, this is your time to shine)

I went to The Mexican Riviera with my girlfriend at the time about three years ago. We did the tourist thing, we stayed at a beautiful resort (which I hope is still intact after last year’s hurricanes), saw the temple ruins, ate some of the best food I’ve ever had, lounged, rented a motorcycle, you know. It was a blast. But I remember we were walking around Playa Del Carmen, a popular beach south of Cancun, when I thought it would be funny to take a picture of her standing next to a Kangaroo Jack poster.

Kangaroo Jack, in case you don’t recall, was a movie starring a computer animated kangaroo and Jerry O’Connell. Which gave a more believable performance, I don’t know, but I can tell you that it’s probably safe to assume the movie was as stupid as it sounds.

Fast forward to last year when my pops took me to the Philippines. We arrived in Manila about two days before a monstrous Avril Lavigne concert. I have nothing against Avril. Many of you know I have a soft spot for her, because she’s so lame in such a charming way. In fact, “My Happy Ending” in one of the select 120 odd songs on my ipod shuffle, which is tall company to be in. But when she’s pulling concerts of 80 to 90,000 (I have no idea what it really was), it makes you wonder.

In my travels, I have been perturbed by the power of American cultural influence on developing countries. Even in Prague and Budapest, American culture always seemed to be held in high esteem. Hell, we listened to GNR for three or four hours straight in that one Budapest bar. But given the quality, or lack thereof, of the movies I’ve seen on my only movie channel at home, I am wondering now if there’s some sort of systematic mental oppression going on with the choice of movies we, as Americans, are exporting to other countries.

Here’s a short list of some of the movies I’ve had the pleasure of viewing at prime time after long days of work and walking:

-Jeepers Creepers 2
-Tremors 3
-Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man
-Bio-Dome
-Out For Justice
-The Fan (at least nine times)

Okay. So. First off, I am of the opinion that all existing copies of Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man should be torched immediately, and I have absolutely no reservations in assuming that “star” Mickey Rourke (Harley Davidson…Don Johnson is the Marlboro Man, and if I have to tell you anything more to convince you that this movie sucks, I’m just going to pound you with a sledge hammer) would agree with me. Tremors 3…hell, I didn’t even know there was a Tremors 2 (although the first one is a classic and I will battle anyone who tells me it’s a bad movie). Out For Justice stars Steven Seagal, that should say enough, and the others just have the difficult fact that they actually exist to get over.

But I wonder what would happen if a government - say, I don't know - the Thai Government...no, we'll say the Philippine government, their culture is much more corrupted by the intellectual bankruptcy of the West - say their government instituted some sort of intellectual filter to decide what came in to their country. Think about it - not only are their teens young and impressionable and in many cases dreaming of a better life in the States, but they're at their most vulnerable point of suggestion and they're finding themselves buying tickets to go see American Pie 14: I Stuck a Tuba in my Vagina.

It's harmful is all I'm saying. I was disturbed, to say the least, to see just how influenced my homeland was by the crap America has unleashed on the world. And I know I sound like a hipster elitist right now, so allow me to make an admission. I like to pretend that I have a refined sense of humor, but that's a lie. A bald-faced lie. I can't tell you how hard I laughed the first time I saw "Half-Baked" and the guy is feeding the horse when the heavyset girl walks by and he says, "Hey Girl, you hungry?" and she gets pissed off. So don't get me wrong. I am by no means an intellectual snob.

It just seems to me like when a country is developing, it is in fact growing. It's maturing into self-sufficiency and dignity. And it is possible to stunt the mental growth of an entire nation. Hell, this line of thinking is nothing new. Here are some lyrics of John Lennon's "Working Class Hero" off the top of my head.

Keep you doped with religion, sex and TV
And you think you're so clever and classless and free
But you're still fucking peasants as far as I can see
A working class hero is something to be

Look, I'm not trying to fool anyone. I work in ADVERTISING. That might be the single biggest culprit in the massive, worldwide spreading of idiocy on unprecedented levels. Nonetheless, I shall do my best. I don't suspect I'm out to radically transform anything, I'm just going to - when I get my chance - try to be emotionally honest and intelligent in anything I do (the previous idea of having a boxer shot in the ring to sell coffee notwithstanding).

On a related note, I was talking yesterday with Eagle Scout, I think it was, about Cambodia and how much I loved it. I loved it, yes, but it's such an amazingly sad place. It's beautiful on so many levels - the people, the land, the culture, the smiles. Look at that picture of that little girl below. She was saying good-bye to the bus as we pulled out of the tire changing station. Being that she was the shortest kid there, nobody could really reach her. I was watching her go down the bus looking disappointed because none of the kids would pick her up to say good-bye. So I reached down when she got to me and she handed me three tiny, tiny flowers. For some reason, I think it made her day more than it made mine.

That's beautiful. But when you think that's the highlight of their days - high fiving with a bunch of smelly backpackers, it is sad. You want more for them (this Chinese girl painted the fingernails of some of the older Cambodian girls very beautifully - and I think they cried when we left. you can tell who's well travelled by seeing how at ease they are when interacting with locals through non verbal communication. it's amazing).

But I guess what makes it so beautiful - and I loved being there - despite the sadness is that it's pure. Cambodia had been locked away from the West for the entire second half of the 20th century. There's no McDonald's (there might be, I didn't see any), there's not horrific billboards dotting the sides of the freeway because there ain't no freeway. It's Cambodia. It's a different world. And that's what makes it incredible.

I was talking for a long ass time with this Brit on the way home - he was telling me his favorite places he'd been to thus far were China and Laos - because there's nothing, absolutely nothing there, to remind you of the comforts of home. And seeing and knowing that is ultimately more comforting.

Odd how that works. If that even made sense.

Khmer a little bit closer, you're my kinda man

2006-05-08T23:22:00.000+07:00

I was climbing up the stairs of the first of seven Angkor temples I was to visit Saturday morning when I first heard it. It was a couple, American or Canadian (no discernible accents), maybe three meters away from me. One says to the other, “…adopted a kid from here. Gave him a mohawk too. Her and Brad are raising it.”

You’re walking atop one of the most awe inspiring manmade structures on the planet. It’s a sacred place still used for worship, a cradle of civilization and religion for almost an entire millennia...and you’re talking about Angelina fucking Jolie and Brad Pitt, two people who don’t give a crap about you and who, despite your best wishes, you will never meet, let alone know.

Yeah, I’m a hater when it comes to inane celebrity bullshit, but it got to be a little excessive, considering every 15 minutes I overheard someone talking about Angelina Jolie and her kid. Open your eyes, people. Look at where you are. Forget about Maddox Jolie for just ten seconds of your lives and look around. THERE ARE MORE INTERESTING THINGS IN THE WORLD.

And I can’t tell you how much it annoys me that I even know that kid’s name.

Ok. Sorry.

So I’ve been to the Mayan Temples of Chichen Itza. I’ve been to the massive beginnings of Western Civilization in Rome. But Angkor Wat and the surrounding temples blow them all away. I’ve read that historically there were over 1,000, but I think my driver said that there are 84 today that tourists can officially visit, climb, and interact with.

And yes, I had a driver. Thanks to some sort of recommendation somewhere, I took a private motorcycle tour. I thought I’d get my own scooter or moped, but we had to share, which wasn’t as fun. Nonetheless, apparently you can hire one of these guys for six to eight dollars. Unfortunately, I read that on the bus on my way home, and I paid him $20, but…he needs it more than I do. Plus he knew his history, and I appreciated everything he had to teach me on the subject. I have his card too, and I would recommend him. So if any of you are looking for a motorcycle tour in Cambodia any time soon….

Back to the ruins. Everything is venerated for its own reason(s), and I shouldn’t disrespect other remains and relics of civilizations gone by because I happened to like one more than the others. Maybe I’m just a bit perturbed that these temples don’t get the pub they deserve, not that it’s been particularly easy or palatable to travel to and through Cambodia for much of my lifetime. Maybe I’m just trying to get Cambodia some extra visitors. Maybe I’m just trying to tell you that there were more impactful places in Cambodia for me than Hollywood Massage.

Now unfortunately, it’s difficult to show the scale of Angkor Wat or any of the other temples in pictures, but for once I didn’t mind so many people in my shots, because they help you get an idea of just how massive everything is. But take my word for it – they’re freaking big.

What impressed me most, after the scale of them all, was the detail. Given these things went up in the 11th century, it’s a miracle that they all survived all the insanity that the country has been subjected to. There are intricate carvings –Hindu and/or Buddhist – on all of the walls, and you figure they were made with nothing but a chisel and a hammer. I don’t know how it’s done so perfectly, but the fact of the matter is, well…it was.

I haven’t gotten to Florence yet when it comes to recollecting my Europe trip, but I have to admit that Michelangelo’s David was the most impressive piece of art or architecture I saw there. It was the only thing that blew me away. Until this, of course. Maybe you just get desensitized to these things once they’ve all been turned into dinner plates and action figures, but to marvel at the potential of human design and manpower can be pretty inspiring. And here I am stressing out over writing a creative commercial for an instant coffee? Why bother? Art and architecture, that’s timeless. That’s inspiring (By the way my tv spot that had a boxer drinking a coffee instead of a water then giving his opponent the kiss of death before his trainer shoots him was rejected. Damn).

Not that I know anything about art or architecture anyway.

I was on top of Bayon (the one with the faces carved into the stones) when I walked by a Buddhist shrine. There were a few people inside, burning incense and praying and what not. They weren’t monks, they were just some Buddhists doing their thing. And this lady pulls me inside and says a whole bunch of things in Cambodian. I wanted to see where she was taking me, so I just smiled and went with it. The only word I understood was “Thai”. Given that I was wearing my “I Adidas Bangkok” t-shirt that Paweena gave me for my birthday (where’s the rest of my presents, you yahoos? Anne, you’re the only exception from this one line diatribe. You rule), I figure she assumed I was Thai and therefore Buddhist.

So I went in and she gave me three sticks of burning incense. I followed her lead and then she told me to kneel down and pray. So I stuck the incense into the pot in front of the shrine and I just kind of pondered my place in the universe and thanked my lucky stars that I was exactly where I was at that moment.

Then she said something to me in Cambodian, to which I replied “I’m not Thai” because she said the word “thai” again. Then she started laughing and laughing and laughing. What an odd woman. I told her I was American and then she shook my hand as I left. I dropped her 1000 Cambodian Reil in the donation box, which is about 25 cents.

The point of this story – sorry, it’s not about religious ideology or existentialism or anything – is that she thought I was Thai. Similarly, I was asked several times if I was Cambodian while in the country. In a new twist, people started telling me I looked like a native.

Those of you that know me (and those who don’t, just look at the profile picture – I’m the slightly more masculine one) know that I am remarkably dark for a Filipino (dark as in complexion, not as in philosophically). Being that I am Filipino, it’s always kind of annoyed me when people – especially while in the Philippines - ask me where I’m from. Dude, I’m 100% Pinoy. I’m not Thai, Fijian, Guaman, Malaysian, Spanish, Indonesian, or Indian – all of which I’ve gotten in the past. And I’m not Cambodian either. I guess it just bothered me when I went to the Philippines with my father and everyone asked if I was Malay. Jesus. In my own homeland? Whatever. But it was nice to hear for once the voices of people welcoming me home – even though I was quick to correct that I was anything but home. The bus guide even told me to try to get into Angkor for free ($20 entrance for one day), but he did tell me that if I was caught I’d be thrown into jail, and god knows how many perverse freaks I’d find in a Cambodian jail.

So mom, dad, if you really were the original super-couple to adopt a Cambodian baby to help him escape the ravages of a war torn third world Cambodia, now’s the time to tell me. And you did it in a much, much more difficult time than you know who did.

Temple of the Dog

2006-05-08T23:05:00.000+07:00

Angkors Away

2006-05-08T22:30:00.000+07:00

Bayon Temple

2006-05-08T14:54:00.000+07:00

this is my favorite picture i've ever taken, and it deserves to be treated as such. so i'm going to shut up and give it its thousand words now.

"That's the way it goes...I guess."

2006-05-08T13:34:00.000+07:00

So I debated retelling this story. I guess recording something for posterity’s sake is kind of a trump card.

Saturday night, after a long day of temple trekking, I was pretty tired, yet still determined to see what the Cambodian nightlife was all about. I took a ride into the Old Market Area of town and was dropped off on the one city block with bars and backpackers. That town’s entire economy is based on tourism. There are the $4 guesthouses and the $2000 a night resorts, but I figured I’d stay suitably ghetto and hang out with the folks like me who just want a good hearty meal for less than three dollars. I dig anyplace where tourism is possible for any budget.

Unfortunately, part of the tourism trade is…well, I don’t want to say unscrupulous, because sometimes things that shouldn’t be are perfectly legal. We’ll just call it unsavory.

Look, I live in Bangkok. Not to be puerile or anything, but the name alone should intimate just how thriving certain “industries” are in this city. So I’m used to it when people come up to me and offer me free beers and sex shows and “full service” massages even if I’m in the back of a cab at 12:41 in the afternoon. I just respond with a “Mai ow” (“I don’t want” – I’m not imitating a cat. Speaking of which, “cat” in Thai is “Mow,” which is pronounced “meow” which is funny). I am not particularly a fan of the sex industry, let alone the sex tourism trade, which I find abhorrent. But it is what it is, and I walk by it every day. Here in Bangkok, well the infamous Patpong Market, it’s a spectacle now – just gawkers, tourists, and a night market. It’s not a dark alley with men in trenchcoats and shadowy figures carrying crowbars and smoking cigarettes. It’s woven into the city, not into some remote corner reserved for perverts and deviants.

Anyway, I’m walking along on this fine Cambodian night, minding my own business and trying not to step on any amputee beggars or kids selling bracelets when this dude comes up to me. He says, “Hey man, you want massage?” Like I said, I’m used to this. I dismissed him. He was persistent, so eventually I got him to go away by saying I wanted dinner and I’d see him later.

Thing about it is, I really did want a massage. After a 12 hour travel time Friday, most of which was uncomfortably cramped and going over potholes plus 13 hours of walking up and around temples all day, my body was aching like Kobe Bryant’s must have been after getting beat down by Raja Bell all day long. I ached all over. And being that an hour long massage is about $5, I was actually looking for one when he came up to me. I’ve had a Thai Massage, I figured I might want to try a Cambodian one, especially in my hour of need.

I walked like four blocks before he rode up to me again on a motorcycle. I think he was stalking me, as I just looked into some bars and pulled some cash out. He said something like “massage, beautiful women. Come look. Come see. You don’t like, you leave.”

So that’s the thing. Many of you may have gotten an email after this incident that said the place was innocuous, but it wasn’t. I lied. I knew what I was getting myself into. Still. You're never going to hear me say that I'm not an idiot.

“Sure, let’s go.”

I think after my adventure in the weirdness that was Little Darlings in Prague I just wanted to go look around and have the story to tell later. Look, I don’t really want to go into detail with this that much, but I’m 99% sure I will never pay for sex in my life. I leave that 1% open because Lex Luthor might come up to me tomorrow and say he’s going to blow up Intercourse, Pennsylvania if I don’t do what he tells me to do. Unlikely, but possible – even though Lex is a fictional character.

But I’m not that naïve. I knew where I was going. I’m not naïve, I’m just a fucking idiot.

I also thought the place was on the block I was walking, so I might go in, look around, then walk out. But I hopped on to his motorcycle and we rode crosstown about ten minutes. Midway through, I thought if I upset this guy, I’m going to be stuck in some shady area of Cambodia with nine dollars in cash on me and my Best Friends of the International Community USA Passport in my pocket. What in the hell is wrong with me?

What in the hell IS wrong with me?

We rolled up to a place called “Hollywood Massage”. You could probably see the neon from two kilometers away. It was like a Vegas city block – but all that light was emanating from the inside. The outside I perfectly normal looking. Boring old building, one small sign, a few motorbikes parked outside, no cars, quiet. A little too quiet.

Wow, I never thought I’d find a proper context to say that line.

Anyway, I walk in and there’s a white stage opposite some tables and benches. The stage is multi levelled and illuminated from below. It’s kind of like those light tables you view film negatives on, just a translucent white. It was like a wide staircase, just four or five steps high, against the wall. There were probably 40 girls sitting on it, watching television. Some are dressed professionally, some are dressed provocatively. And I’m sitting there thinking “I should not be here. I should not be here. I should not be here.”

It’s pretty offensive, but I suppose it is more efficient that the girls are all numbered. I was just sitting there with the guy that brought me – who said some unprintable things that Americans like me like to do at a place like this – and two other creepy guys that were just sitting and staring, waiting for a busy girl like guys waiting for their favorite barber at the barber shop.

I picked girl number five.

I said to the guy for about the 80th time “massage only.” He seemed okay with that. I thought hey, I’ll get a massage, I’ll go, she makes her four dollars, he gets his commission, I get my massage, everyone goes home happy. Well, I also thought “get the hell out of here and never come back” but we were far past the point of no return.

She led me down this long, dark, dirty hallway of rooms into a small room with a stained bed and a bathroom that had a shower and a sink. I was horrified. The room was no bigger than the length of a twin bed (which was elevated, I don’t know why) and the width of maybe two. I sat down and she left for about five minutes. She came back carrying some sterilizing wipes and two condoms. I think I said about 38 words my whole time there, and 22 of them were “massage only.”

Five minutes into it, it was obvious she did not know what the hell she was doing massage-wise because she was either hurting me or tickling me. She did walk on my back, which was nice, but other that that, it was an uncomfortable barrage of elbows and knuckles. Lying face down on that bed, I kept wondering how I had gotten myself into this situation.

After about fifteen minutes, she spoke.

“Done.”

At this point, I probably should have accepted the crappy massage I got and headed for the hills, but I think the cheapness in me kicked in and got rid of the nervousness. I mean, I did pay for an hour. Crappy as though it may be, I was going to get that hour massage. So through some really odd communication, she begrudgingly agreed to keep going.

“Done? It’s only been fifteen minutes.”

She rolled her eyes, then when she saw that I meant it, she looked puzzled. Hell, she was puzzled. She was thinking – and I could read it on her face – “you came to this massage parlor...for a massage?” she really did not want to go on. Look, I didn’t want to just bounce out of there. I thought – and this is why I need comprehensive therapy – maybe we could hang out, maybe be myspace friends. She could tell me some stories, I’d tell her I’d go home and get a job, and I’d sent her money and eventually bring her back to the states where we’d settle in Ashland, Oregon as daisy farmers.

Too bad the only English she spoke consisted of the following phrases:

-“Nineteen year [sic] old.”
-“Done.”
-“You want more?”
-“I dunno.”

Bad fucking times.

Look, it’s sad. It saddens me to write this. If you think about this poor girl – her name was Namya, she told me, who knows if that’s true, what else does she have in life? Where’s she going to be ten years from now? What does she have to look forward to? And you just want to take them all away and I don’t know. I guess you just want to take them away and adopt them, marry Brad Pitt, and live happily ever after, championing the cause of human rights and starring in really crappy movies twice a year. It is sad. But I was too freaked out at the whole place to do anything else.

Still, the stubbornness in me wanted my massage, so she started massaging my shoulders, which was fine. If she had just done that for the last 40 minutes, I would have been fine with it. It was just what I wanted. But for those of you as dense as me that still think that a legitimate massage was possible at this place, she kept stopping and complaining that her arms were sore. So I just let her be and we sat there and stared at each other. It wasn’t uncomfortable, it was just two people in a room looking at each other. I’m sure she was thinking something along the lines of hurry up and get this over with. The odd thing is, I was thinking the same thing.

I think it was the longest hour of my life. Any confusion she had turned into her being a bit pissy as she walked out, as she walked off and let me find my way out on my own (NOT fun). I hopped on the guy’s scooter and he took me back.

-Did you get some Boom-Boom?
-No man…not tonight.
-You no like her?
-No, that’s not it, I just wanted a massage.
-Americans come here all the time, they get two girl sometimes.
-Yeah, hey, I’m not into it, man.
-You want me take you someplace else?
-No, man, just take me back. Do you go to that place, or you just work for them?
-I have lots of favorite girls there.
-Yeah, well…I have a girlfriend (lie).
-I have a wife back home….four months…with baby.
-She’s pregnant?
-Yes.
-Um….congratulations?

I was wondering later that night what went on in that girl’s head when she got to the point where she realized I wasn’t going to pay her for sex. The sad thing about it is she probably was disappointed. She needed the money.

Where the Streets have no pavement

2006-05-08T11:41:00.001+07:00

If you meet enough people in the world – you don’t even have to be that well travelled, necessarily – you’re invariably going to run into someone who’s been to more remote places, has more adventures under their belt and has basically seen things you wonder if you could or would do if given the opportunity. Sometimes they’ll tell you they actually feared for their well-being, or worse yet, their lives. And you’ll wonder: why?

The answer is quite simple, really…and I don’t want to oversimplify it by saying the typical “because it’s there.” I do think that is a valid reason; you do it because you choose to. But you choose to do it because it’s invigorating. It’s exhilarating. It’s like sports. Why do sports appeal to people? It’s because it’s about pushing yourself physically. 162 games of major league baseball? 48 minutes of basketball followed by a double overtime that still goes to the buzzer? You’re pushing yourself physically and mentally. Don’t forget the stress factor – and that’s really the only reason people consider something as lame as golf to be a sport: because it pushes you. It puts you under pressure, under duress, and you want to see how you, or your hero, responds.

Think about it.

On Friday, I boarded a bus to the border to get to Siem Reap, Cambodia, home of the famous Angkor Temples. Here’s a quick, off the top of my head, certainly inaccurate history of the last 30-odd years of Cambodia, for those of us whose knowledge of the country is very limited:

In 1975, the CPK (Communist Party of Kampuchea, not California Pizza Kitchen) overthrew the existing Cambodian Monarchy. Wanting to achieve their vision of Marxist ideology and led by the infamous Pol Pot, the party evacuated the city and forced every citizen to the countryside to work as farmers, thereby making the country an entire agrarian collective. According to Wikipedia, people in much of the country “were rounded up and executed for speaking a foreign language, wearing glasses, scavenging for food, and even crying for dead loved ones.”

When the government was overthrown by Northern Vietnam in 1979, the Khmer Rouge took to resistance by stationing themselves in Thailand and various insurgencies throughout rural Cambodia, which is basically all of Cambodia. The planting of the infamous landmine-laced landscape took place during this time, and in a 1999 count, an estimated 40,000 had suffered amputations because of landmines since 1979 – that’s an average of 40 a week for twenty years. Basically, the country was at war for thirty years, as prior to the takeover, the country was already being used as battleground in the Vietnam War.

The country was under Vietnamese occupation until the early 90’s – keep in mind that the entire Western World was closed off from the country for around thirty years – and according to my driver, tourism began to trickle in starting in 1993. UN regulations and sponsored elections brought back the royalty and introduced democracy. After such a long, brutal period, the people of the country are now welcoming farangs like me with open arms.

(Scholars on the history of Cambodia, please offer any corrections. I’m at work so I don’t really have the time to go as in depth as I really want to)

Okay. So that was a long introduction to be basically telling you that the ride from Bangkok to Siem Reap is about 350 kilometers, I believe. It was about 200 to the border, which took about three and a half hours on a Friday Holiday morning. The last 150 km, however, proved to be much, much longer.

When I bought my ticket from Kao Son road, I was told the ride was a whopping 12 hours. I looked at the ticket vendor in disbelief. When I asked why so long, she just said, “you’ll see.”

It would be generous to say that 30% of the road from Poi Pet to Siem Reap was paved. Of the six and a half hours to on the road, maybe 1.5 hours were spent on any semblance of asphalt. The “bus” was stuffed with about 25 people, but ideal capacity was probably 17 or 18. People were sitting on bags in the aisle, and I was sitting shotgun between the driver and a six foot four English guy on his 19th country since October. But in all of those years of war, nobody ever had the time or resources to consider an infrastructure.

Making things interesting on the ride was the fact that our windshield was held together by electrical tape, and had spider webbed to varying degrees at several points. Every bump we hit – and that’s quite a few – made the window shake. Being that we were sitting about half a meter behind this glass (and yes, I’m converting myself into metric), one pothole could have meant I’d be emerging from the bus looking like Darkman.

No, Darkman was a burn victim, wasn’t he? And wasn’t he also Liam Neeson? Damn, talk about a crappy action movie.

So I could have come out looking like Kanye West, only without a jaw wired shut. Thank God I ain’t to cool for the seat belt. Oh wait; there were no seat belts. Nor did the speedometer work.

Speaking of seatbelts and speedometers, some basic conclusions can be made here. One, we didn’t need seatbelts. Why? Because it took us about five and a half hours of driving time to cover 150 kilometers. That’s an average speed 27.3 km per hour, and for all of you Americans and Brits out there, that’s five and a half hours over unpaved dirt roads at a whopping average speed of 17. 05 miles per hour.

We passed villages with naked kids playing in trash. We passed trucks with maybe 10 people in the truck beds. We passed motorcycles with a dad driving and a mom behind him carrying two kids. We passed – and this was a first for me – a long stretch of huts without electricity – you only knew where they were because of a single candle flame off in the distance. You look off in the distance and you just wonder, shit, how many landmines are sitting out there? And sadly, it’s a valid question.

On the way back, we had to change a tire. I don’t know how scientific it was, but I did get to watch a Cambodian mechanic pound the hell out of our wheel with a sledgehammer before they drilled it back on. Why? I don’t know. But I’m home, am I not? I won’t ask questions as long as by the end of the day I can take a cold shower and be given the time to ingest it all.

About halfway through the trip, we had to cross a bridge. Being that the bridges are only wide and strong enough for one car at a time, we had the time to stop and observe a busy looking man on the other side. We heard the squeals of a pig as we started to cross the bridge and soon all saw that he was tying its feet together. Right when we passed by, we saw him take a knife out and raise it above the poor thing’s neck. A collective, “yeayahayahyayucckkk” went through the bus – interesting only because of the 10 or so different native dialects being spoken inside – as the man slaughtered a pig – probably at least 150kg – directly in front of us. I wonder if he did it just for show, but later we did see guys on bikes driving down the road with two pigs strapped to the back of their bikes. Anyway, seeing a pig slaughtered on the side of the road definitely qualified as the high point of the trip.

We rolled into Siem Reap at about 9:30. Using a typical scam, they drove straight to a guesthouse instead of a bus station. I had to wait at the border for about three hours – and it’s very ideal for them to arrive late at night (two or three hours later than expected) and conveniently drive straight to some accommodations – but I had reservations on the other side of town.

Even the most well traveled backpackers on the ride had to be affected by the level of poverty in the country. Right after crossing the border and getting my requisite stamps, I had to wait for the rest of the bus to come through. And there’s this chain link fence to the left. As soon as you walk up to it, hands start sticking out, begging for money. And you look to the left and you see five or six kids lined up, just staring at you. It’s heartbreaking. There was a girl – couldn’t have been more than seven – selling cigarettes out of a basket.

But I prefaced this whole entry with that crap about pushing the limits because once I was at my room, in my $14 personal bathroom air conditioned room (“very expensive” according to the bus guide), I started thinking: that was easy. There was nothing to that. After a few hours I was fine sitting behind a large plate of glass ready to explode on me. There was no pavement, but it was still a well-worn road. And it makes me just want to go and go and go and see what people don’t see, go where there is a bit of danger involved, wonder if, hey, am I ever going to come back, because that would suck if I didn’t. It’s a huge world out there. It’s much bigger than what you see on the beaten path. And this path, while unpaved, still makes you wonder what else is out there, beyond the landmines.

PS There’s some video of the ride on my new myspace video page. Look for the video links at www.myspace.com/donkeypunched.

Almost Heaven...West Cambodia

2006-05-08T11:35:00.000+07:00

Country Roads - take me home - West Cambodia

2006-05-08T11:23:00.000+07:00

Holiday in Cambodia

2006-05-04T10:45:00.000+07:00

So the loyal readers of this blogsphere may remember me saying a few months ago that my old creative director in Prague told me I could get to Thailand via the trans-Siberia railroad, then south through China and Cambodia. And while I dismissed that as pure folly, I also commented that I never wanted to go to Cambodia for anything.

Oh, how the times they are a-changing.

So a few weeks ago I went to this little travel place that was selling packages to Cambodia for three days and two nights (20-24 hours of which are actually spent on a bus). There was a great deal that someone showed me – actually, I remember who showed me, it was a very, very beautiful Thai woman, which means it could have been a boy so I didn’t holler – that came out to 3,500 baht, or $84. Not bad for a weekend in probably the most exotic country I’ll go to on this particular circumnavigation. But anyway, I didn’t want to take a day off of work since I just had a week off. So I decided to wait.

Fast forward to this week. My Visa to be in Thailand expires on May 8. If I don’t leave the country by that day, I have to pay an overstay fee of 500 baht ($12.50) per day before I leave. 200 more days in the country and you face jail time, I believe. I don’t know. Anyway, tomorrow is yet another vacation day and so it was perfect timing for me to leave the country and come back. Of course, the aforementioned $84 tour had somehow quadrupled to almost 12,000 baht – either because the lady boy from earlier didn’t know what the hell was going on or because of the long weekend. Either way, dude –that sucks.

So I went budget and now have a one way ticket to Siem Reap, Cambodia, home of the famous Angkor Wat, one of the largest, if not the largest, religious structures in the world. There’s quite a bit of history in the country, including one of the worst records of human rights violations in the 20th century, and I think that by far it will be the poorest country I see. I just booked a room at the Norweigan run Earthwalkers Guest House (http://earthwalkers.no)for $14 a night (could have gone as low as $4 a night in a shared dorm room, but after a 12 hour bus ride, I’m gonna want some peace and quiet). Someone remind me to buy a bus ticket back as soon as I get there.

I didn’t realize it before, just chalk it up to ignorance I suppose – but Cambodia is on the rise as one of the hottest tourist destinations in Southeast Asia. It’s no longer impossible to cross borders without seeing men with machine guns, and even though there are still landmines scattered all over the country, it has developed a healthy tourism industry, which is a starting point for such a poor country. It’s going to be interesting to realize firsthand the power I have there – well not me, per se, but the power of the dollar. $40 could feed a family for weeks, I’m sure. And that’s astounding. It’s sad and astounding and it elicits some emotion on me that I can’t describe yet. Maybe afterwards. We’ll see.

I think that part of me that decided to just buy a one way ticket and $14 room (there are hammocks on the premises, I’m told) isn’t just parsimony, but it’s really kind of a boredom thing. Work is very, very stagnant – soporific, even. I just want to go reconnoiter new lands and kind of recharge the old battery, get the mind stimulated. Really, not much is on my mind for most of the day other than how much I abhor Nescafe instant Cappuccinos and what makes John Lackey such a bitch.

So yeah. This will be country number eight on the 2006 hit list. Don’t think I’d say this with any other country, unless I decide to try to go to Burma aka Myanmar aka Hot Nikks, but...wish me luck.

Here goes nothing. Not to draw any morbid parallels, but we all know what age Kurt Cobain, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, 2Pac, and Jimi Hendrix all met their untimely demise (demises?) in.

I left my wallet in Bratislava (Bratislava, Slovakia 3/18-3/19)

2006-05-02T16:17:00.000+07:00

Sometimes an adventure is just so thoroughly dominated by the sheer force of someone's personality - their charisma, if you will - that the places you hang out in take a back seat to the company you keep. Yes, even whlie travelling. In the case of Bratislava, Slovakia, that person would be the lovable Tomash (pictured below).

Before I get into Bratislava, I do have to admit to you, dear readers, that I had never even heard of this city prior to Grant's arrival in Prague with his Lonely Planet pocket guide to Eastern European Sex Tourism. According to him, Bratislava, the capitol of Slovakia, was also the site of the movie "Hostel", in which a handful of drunk american partygoers touring Europe are seduced by beautiful women only to later be used as guinea pigs in a horrific torture chamber for the russian mafia.

as is my understanding. i never saw it.

Now, with a primer like that, how could we really not go? The ability to say hey - we partied in Bratislava and survived would be pretty cool. That, and it was quite appealing to stay off the beaten path, and find ourselves in places that you don't typically think of as tourist destinations. I figure hey - I have my whole life in front of me to go to places like Venice, Florence, or Rome. Let's go to Bratislava. Let's go to Dubrovnik, Croatia (grrrr....). Bratislava was most definitely a developing city - there was construction all over the place, and much of the city infrastructure was in varying degrees of disarray. Nonetheless, we proceeded without reservation, once we figured out what the proper train stop was.

Another thing we heard about the city came from the aforementioned Patrik in Prague - who himself was Slovakian. He said, "you go here, you will see the most beautiful women in the world." I find this funny because I've heard people say this about four different stops now - Prague, Budapest, Bratislava, and here - Thailand. I don'tk now if it's a form of nationalistic pride or what, but I think alot of people like to claim their own country as having the best looking people. I do think there's a general consensus out there, however, that all in all, Englanders are pretty unsightly. No offense, Posh Spice.

Anyway, this was our first stop where we were lucky to have hostel roommates - pictured below, Norah (the short one) and Melanie. They were Austrian, just visiting for the weekend. They were alright - they taught me some German, and I thought I had the phrase down - it was supposed to mean "the squirrel's tail" and be one of the harder German phrases to pronounce, like a tongue twister. But when I later said it to my little cousin in Austria, she had no idea what the hell I was talking about. Oh well.

Back to Tomash. We only had one night in this city, so it was quite "fortuitous" that we bumpedinto this mofo. The girls hadn't eaten when we met up with them, but that didn't stop them from taking some seriously awful shots of Slovakian liquor before heading out for a night on the town. Once nice and buzzed, we left the hostel around 11, to a bar we saw after our brief sightseeing. Being that it was a Saturday night, we were sure that we would find some sort of poppin' party - being that the overall eerie silence that blanketed the city seemed to intimate that somewhere out there, a party was raging far underground.

So we get to this bar. An like I said, it's not that much past eleven, but it's closed. What the hell kind of bar closes at 11 on a Saturday? Anyway, this crowd of people was milling about outside, with this tall guy with glasses seemingly leading the party. It was Tomash. He welcomed us to Bratislava, and promised to show us a good time. He was nice and hammered. He was with a huge grou - maybe eight or nine other people, including his brother and his brother's girlfriend.

So they lead us to this bar. We sit down. Tomash goes to order a few beers. He comes back empty handed. This became quite a familiar site.

Us: Tomash, where's the beer?
Tomash: He said they don't really have any more and we must order something else.
Us: But that guy right there just got a new beer.
Us: And that guy too.
Us: And that guy.
Tomash: Let's go somewhere else. This bartender is a faggot anyway.

Woah, woah, woah. It seemed, by the first bar at least, that Tomash was the Bratislava village idiot. Nobody wanted to serve him. Nobody even wanted to seem to talk to him, which is why he latched on to us. I liked him at first - he was entertaining. But as the night wore on, he just got more and more obnoxious.

Tomash: Eric, I like these Austrian girls. What do you think their [vaginas are like] ?
Eric: Oh my god.
Nora: What did he just say?
Eric: He said he likes your friend.
Nora: She likes your friend with the red hat [Grant].
Eric. She likes Grant?
Nora: Yes.
Eric: Why?
Tomash: Eric...
Eric: Does anyone want to change seats? Please?

Yeah, he got to be a pretty obnoxoius drunk, but he did take us to a late night pizzeria which was so %£@%^ing delicious, I'll never forget it - and to another bar where the music was just GNR, Bon Jovi, Metallica, and nothing post-1993. There were flannels and long hair, and lots and lots of headbanging. Thad said he felt like he stepped into a time machine and was back in 1991. And that's the thing about developing countries - they really are behind on the times. Metallica? The Unforgiven? What the hell? That came out when I was in seventh grade.

Unfortunately at the headbanger's ball, I felt as though I had some skinheads eyeballing me. I was in the corner with Nora, just chatting away, with a beer in my hand and a bow in my hair (don't remember where it came from), when this bald guy started staring at me. I had absolutely no problems staring right back at him, but then he whispered something to his other bald friend and then they were both staring at me. Maybe it was because I'm brown. Maybe it was because I had my arma round a white woman. Maybe it's because I had a fucking bow in my hair. It was actually probably all of the above, but for the first and only time of the trip, I was uncomfortable. That carried on at the next club, which was very loud, very neon, although they were playing Ja Rule and Li'l John, yet seemingly run by the Russian Mob. This is not an exaggeration, this place had Russian Mob written all over it - the cool thing was they had a slide going from the second floor to the bottom floor, but at this point I was in low profile mode and was just leaning against the wall. So I have to admit, the thought of being beaten by a bunch of angry skinheads kind of had me on edge for the last two hours of the night. Sucks to be me.

But anyway, that was that. Two bars, one pizza parlor, one club, and one sunrise later, we had concluded quite an extensive tour of the Bratislavan nightlife.

It's a weird town, really. Walls are crumbling. It's quiet. It's big, but the buildings aren't too tall. Cobblestone streets. But they party so, so hard, and you have to really dig to find the places. It definitely had its own vibe to it, and we most definitely appreciated that.

got to get it

2006-05-02T16:14:00.000+07:00

got got to get it

2006-05-02T16:09:00.000+07:00

I got 27 Problems but a b*tch ain't one

2006-05-02T12:44:00.000+07:00

Well here’s a sentence I never thought I’d say: I really wanted to go to the MTV Asia Video Music Awards this weekend, but I have to go to Cambodia instead.

Weird.

So my whole love affair with Thailand is pretty easy to figure out. I think I’ve spent much of this year not really growing up, per se, but really finding out what kind of person I am on a strictly individual basis (you know, without any of you idiots around to distract me with drinking, wing eating contests, barroom trivia, video gaming, and Greco-Roman wrestling). And I think I’ve figured out that a dominant personality trait I have is curiosity. I spend my off days (like yesterday – hey everyone, thanks for telling me it was Thai Labor Day, I appreciate that, I sure am glad I didn’t wake up at the usual time, walk to work in the oppressive Bangkok humidity, and find myself confronted with an empty building and locked doors. That sure would have sucked, ahem ahem…) wandering around aimlessly, alternating between trying to find Lonely Planet recommended spots and trying to get hopelessly lost to the point where I surrender and just take a cab home.

So curiosity, while it killed the cat, has done nothing but been a wonderful companion of mine. If not for curiosity, would I have taken a Thai cooking class last weekend? Would I have gone to a snake farm to watch a gargantuan king cobra be milked of its venom? Would I have stumbled into a free concert of Thai hip hop supergroup Thaitanium on Saturday? Probably not. But curiosity is good. It makes a good friend when you’re in a foreign land all by your lonesome.

See, I think I’ve been incorrectly and unfairly labeled as an intellectual person. It’s not that I don’t enjoy thinking about things- abstractions, particularly (like how good would Jose Canseco have been if he had never gotten into steroids? He was still a genetic freak without them) – it’s just that I have this need to know what the hell is going on around me. Why is this market selling grasshoppers the size of my fist? What does a fist full of ant eggs taste like? Nothing like chicken. My point is curiosity doesn’t allow you to be lonely. And that’s a wonderful little mechanism.

Now this is why I dig Thailand.

I have this sense of freedom in this country that I didn’t have in Prague. I may have gone into this before, but if you were to use Bangkok as a starting point and go any direction in the country, you’re going to find something cool. My recent jaunt to Koh Tao was towards the South. Also down that way are more resorts, full moon parties, and Malaysia. North yields hilltribe cultures and rainforest. Eastwards will hit Cambodia (this weekend’s featured destination), and West will take you to ancient temples, a tiger temple, the River Kwai, and boat karaoke. It’s amazing. It satisfies my curiosity of finding something worthwhile to do with my time.

I was comparing it with my previous home of Prague the other day. And don’t let me lead you to believe that Prague is without its charms. Prague was a wonderful city. It’s just that if you look at the country as a whole, there didn’t seem to be much else to do. One, it was too #@$%ing cold. But two, it seemed pretty desolate. There’s remote areas of this country too, but if you want to check it out, you can just hop on the back of an elephant and go. Frankly, I think that’s amazing. And that, again, is only a slight exaggeration.

Back to an earlier comment. I have to visit Cambodia this weekend to get a stamp in my passport that lets me stay another 30 days in this country. Since I’m only in week five of a 12 week stint here, I’ll have to do this again in June. While that helps my goal of seeing 10 countries before I get home (don’t think I’ll quite make it, I don’t count Germany since I only saw the inside of Düsselforf airport), it also is a pretty common maneuver for farangs like me in this country – especially since so many of them come to visit and decide to never go back.

God, it makes me so happy that there are places like that in the world. You know, places that inspire people to just stop. To stop the motion, the perpetual movement on and on and on and fucking on. To drop anchor and call it home. I admire that in a place.

My point is some of you may be getting surprise postcards from Cambodia sometime soon. Holy shit, it’s my birthday. I’m 27 now.

That’s cool, I guess.

Hungary Like the Wolf

2006-04-28T16:24:00.000+07:00

For those of you paying attention to the drivel I write, you'll notice that the end of the Prague post said our next stop was Bratislava. Well, stop me if you've heard this one before: A funny thing happened on the way to Bratislava...

We missed the trainstop. I don't know what it was - a combinaion of being half asleep, half hungover, infected with euro bird flu, and arriving half an hour early, but we all decided to ignore the giant signs that read BRATISLAVA midway through Sovakia. Now, being that we were ona train in the mdidle of a developing country that had been long decimiated by iron fisted communist rule, it was a very unpalatable and unrealisitc option to either A) get off the train and try to get our way back, or B) jump. so we sat tight.

naturally, about a twenty minutes after we left the wonderful capitol of Slovakia, the ticket man came into our cab to check our tickets. He saw that they were stamped not for Budapest, which was still three horus away, but for Bratislava. He asked us, in broken English, if we knew that we had just missed our stop. Well, yes, we did realize that, and we did our best to explain to him that we were horribly mistaken and we were willing to rectify the situation, but I think the only message that was conveyed was that we were a bunch of freaking morons.

What made things interesting was the fact that he not only didn't have a credit card machine attached to his hip, but he also only took two forms of cash: Euros or Czech crowns. Between the three of us (I had neither), we had maybe tihrty dollars. That wasn't enough to pay for all of us, I think we owed roughly $17 each - but the train guy just took our money and said "shhh" with ihs finger to his lips. Then, of course, he put the money in his front pocket and continued on his merry way.

So, that's where we learned travel lesson 1: Don't ever find yourself with no cash on you. Bad idea. Bad times.

Exacerbating the already bad times was that it happened AGAIN when we crossed the Hungarian border. This time we were all out of European cash, save for £12 in coins that I still have in my freaking suitcase. Luckily, Thad had $30 american on him and that bribe worked to get that guy to screw off. So basically, yes - our idiocy forced us to bribe to train guys to let us stay on and not arrest us. Damn them. And damn our idiocy.

It was a long, horrible train ride thanks to the previous night's activities in Prague. But we were greeted by my third favorite meal of the trip (the pork knee was second), which was a street vendor's delicious doner kebab. It was the first of many on this trip.

Again, in Budapest, we settled into our routine of daily sightseeing and nightly debauchery. I have to admit, i tihnk Budapest was my favorite city of the trip. It had this distinct Prague vibe, in that it was cold, still developing, and yet with a strong sense of history. But Budapest was much more modern - their were wide roads, nice cars, modern architecture. It was like it was silver where Prague was copper. Does that make sense? They both have their charms, and I'll never disparage Prague, but Budapest was a bit sleeker. And the hookers were much more discreet.

Our first night there, we decided to mellow out and go to a cafe to get our bearings and people watch. These two younger looking girls stop us on our way in and ask if we knew how to get to some place we've never heard of. Actually, they asked if we had a map, to which we politely replied no before sitting down and enjoying some Bavarian tea or something equally wacky.

Anyway, I ran back to the hostel to get something and pickedup a free map on the way back. I handed it to the girls who were still there after 40 minutes, asking every man that walked by for directions or a map. They seemed kind of confused at first, at least before showing their gratitude and accepting.

I get in and I tell Thad and Grant that I gave the two gals a map. Grant, being the shapr eagle scout that he is, says something along the lines of "dude, i'm pretty sure those are hookers." and so we watch them slowly move, after looking at me, pointing, and laughing with the map in hand. He pointed out how they had just sat there asking for directions that whole time, and they only asked small groups of men, like us. sure enough, the lonely planet guide to eastern european sex tourism confirmed that this was a typical Hungarian ploy: get some guys to show you to a bar, have them buy you some drinks, and either turn a trick on them, or get a bar tab that's around $300 for a few rounds.

What can I say? I'm naive.

My only complaint about Budapest is that the goulash, particularly the goulash soup, wsa hyped as being as delicious as Prague's, only spicier. On that count, it disappointed me entirely. That's one reason I'm very haappy to be here - when Thais say they're going to make it hot, they freaking mean it.

Anyway, Grant and I went out one night to a neighborhood bar and made friends with some jovial Hungarian law students - Gabriel, Alexander, and the lovely Zuzan. We talked to them all night long, with one of many highlights coming when I complained to Alexander, who was about 6-6, that the Hungarian goulash soup was not as spicy as advertised. He told me that his mom made it spicy. Naturally, this was the place for the obligatory "your mom" joke, but being that he was almost a foot taller than me, in his home country, and I have no idea how that kind of joke would translate, I refrained.

I did not refrain, however, from telling Alexander that NBA Europeans were soft. This guy knew everything about the NBA - stats, heights, previous transactions - he even knew who Andris Biedrins is. We ended up challenging them to a game of three on three the next day to prove once and for all that despite recent international woes, Team USA is still the class of the world when it comes to international competition. They agreed, but...they were a no-show. Damn shame, too - they were probably my favorite crew that we met. And Grant and I were going to revisit our frat boy days and compete for Zuzan's love. Oh yeah, here's my Hungarian vocabulary:

Shuua (pronounced like 'sure' but with a Hungarian accent): Beer
Cholk (like "chalk"): Kiss
Gynaroo Vot: "You are beautiful."

yeah, like you need to know any other words.

One thing that made me very, very happy was the fact that all of the Hungarians in this bar (and yes, we were there until almost sunrise again) LOVED Guns N Roses. There wsa a juke box there with maybe 10-12 GNR songs, all of which we heard more than once - Estranged, November Rain, Don't Cry, and all the singles off of Appetite. As if it wasn't enough that all these guys knew all the words and could convincingly play air guitar to them, there was a whole crew of drunks behind us headbanging and moshing with each other for probably the last two hours of the night. If germans are known for loving david hasselhoff, Hungarians should be known for loving Guns N F'ing Roses.

Budapest freaking rules. Next stop: Bratislava, Slovakia.

Hungary for Love

2006-04-27T16:15:00.000+07:00

A Buda Buda Buda

2006-04-27T16:11:00.000+07:00

Thaime out for Thailand

2006-04-27T14:04:00.000+07:00

Let me just take a thaime out from this walk down european memory lane to ponder and extol the virtues of Thailand. I'll get into it more later, but one of the keys of maximizing the travel experience is to go to a place that feels different. I realize this sounds like an obvious insight, but I have to admit that my favorite places I've seen on this jaunt around the world have been the places that have little, if any, resemblance to back home - Venice. Prague. Bratislava. And now, Bangkok.

It's a different world here. A few nights ago I was sitting in an alley, eating at an outdoor food vendor and reading Bridge on the River Kwai (want to be educated about it before I go see it. I'm a fucking dork). And I'm sitting there at I don't know, 8:30, not hearing any English being spoken (the art of pointing and smiling as communication having being honed over the last few months), enjoying my seafood pad thai (cross your fingers for my stomach, that was my first experience with street seafood). I enjoy kicking back and soaking my environment in, so I get to this point in the book where I felt comfortable stopping, stretch, and turn around, and dude. There's an elephant walking by. A freaking elephant. Where else in the world can you see that?

There are other charms, naturally (any of you I've chatted with over the last few weeks has undoubtedly heard about the elephants - one plays the harmonica). I like seeing familiar signs or logos written in Thai. I like how there's designated space on public transportation for monks. I LOVE how these people eat five to seven times a day, and I love that if you look hard enough you can eat five to seven times for less than three dollars. I love the guy that sells donut holes out of a wok on my way home, I love that a cab driver offered to take me to a "full service" massage parlor at 12:41 in the afternoon yesterday on the way to the Thai Immigration Bureau. I love how the world's second largest snake farm is in walking distance, and I was able to see a guy haul around a 12 foot king cobra there. And I love that I'm going to come home wearing an entirely fake outfit: Rolex, Diesel Jeans, Abercrombie shirt, Coco Chanel sunglasses, and an Adidas warmup jacket.

Most importantly, I love that it's hard to run out of things to do here. I have yet to see a tranny dance show, a floating market, a tiger,or go on an elephant trek. This is the reason that if and when I ever get home I want to live in New York. I'm a curious person. It's not that I get bored easily. I just need some kind of stimulation - and to be in a place where it's hard to run out of things to do is really the best thing.

It's all so relative though. As I touched on earlier, I did get a bit of temptation to run away from it all and stay in Koh Tao forever. There's something to be said about living such a simple life. I want to see if I still have that passage by Henry David Thoreau memorized. You know, the one from Walden.

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and to see if I could learn what it had to teach me, and not, when I came to die, realize I had not lived.

Okay, that was off the top of my head. Let me google that shit now.

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front
only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it
had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not
lived."

Damn. So close.

Anyway, I like Thailand. I have to go back to work now. I'll write more tomorrow when I'm pretending to be doing stuff. And yes, we're at that point again.

99 Praguelems but a b*tch ain't one (Prague 3/10-3/15)

2006-04-27T12:25:00.000+07:00

The three of us settled fairly quickly into a very effective euro-routine. Get up, go see the sights (in Prague, it's quite easy, everything is in walking distance), eat, drink coffee when needed, then be nice and relaxed for the nightlife. And let me tell you something about Prague, and basically the Eastern Bloc as a whole: the nightlife is f***ing inSANE.

I know I have 70+ posts I wrote in Prague and about Prague, but seriously dude, I had no idea what kind of a city it was until these two jokers joined me. It's all a blur, and it all transpired five weeks ago, but I think I can piece things together from here.

First off, I always like taking the Muzeum metro station with these guys. You didn't have to transfer, it was centrally located, and you get to see some beautiful medieval sights wherever you walk. The station was situated at the top end of Wenceslaus Square, where a whole lot of Czech history - particularly in 1989 - has taken place. Of course now, it's turned into a den of debauchery.

If you recall, faithful readers, my Valentine's Day post, you'll remember how disturbed I was at being solicited by a prostitute for the first time in my life. Quick transcript:

Hooker: Do you speak English?
Me: Yes...
Hooker: You want sex? Blowjob?
Me: Oh my god.

well, that phrase turned into quite a familiar refrain as the three of us had a few nights where we stumbled back to the Metro stop at five in the morning (the locals going to work did NOT seem amused by a bunch of drunken americans getting on the train with them that early. hell, I probably would have hated us too) when we would be serenaded by women saying over and over "Sex? Blow job?" I mean, talk about blunt. Isn't there some value to being discreet? Just ask the hookers in Budapest. Oh, but that's for later. Just, if you're trying to visualize or audioize this, remember they're asking with thick Eastern Euro accents.

So not only that, but the night before Grant got in, Thad and I found ourselves taking a free tour of Little Darlings, Prague's biggest and best "cabaret." You understand why I put cabaret in quotes. Yes you do. Because you're reading this and you're my friend, and you're smart. Or at least not naive. Let's just say this. Had we decided to drink absinth there, I'm not sure I would be here today. Little Darlings was immediately the weirdest place I've ever been in. And, yes, there was a dwarf. A midget. Some google investigating led me to find out her name was "Bridget the Midget" and you haven't seen much until you've seen a midget in lingerie. Anyway. Enough of that.

Speaking of absinth, our last night In Prague was kicked off by four shots of the infamous mystery liquor with 90% alcoholic content. I really thought it might kill us to drink that much (after three or four beers each), but to tell you the truth it went down easier than expected. Granted, we were soon off our rockers (Thad said he could hear me singing along to the video of "Total Eclipse of the Heart" which came on while he was taking a piss down the hall), but being off your rocker does allow you to make friends with your waitress and her bartender friend. Katia and Patrik - thanks for the memories.

So anyway, we bought them a round, I ate pork knee (picture a whole freaking pig's leg chopped off, roasted, then dropped on a wooden board with three dipping sauces. by the way, it was delicious), and we closed the place down around one/one-thirty. They liked us, so they told us to meet them in half an hour at a place with a giant soccer ball sign a few blocks down. We agreed, and we soon found ourselves there with our other two new friends, Nicolee Drake of San Diego, California, and this Australian dude who was obviously smitten by her. Hi, Nicolee. I'm hoping my blog shows up next time someone googles you. She's pictured below. Somewhere.

So we got to this bar, which was fairly crowded for a Monday night/Tuesday morning. There was us, there was an old lady drinking vodka, and there was the bartender's girlfriend, who was quite attractive. Katia and Patrik told us to tell the bartender they sent us, and they said for us to call him by his name. Since we were all too drunk at this point to pronounce his name anywhere close to accurately, they wrote it down for us. We slapped it down on the bar, and he said "that's me." and we said "yes it is." and then he poured us our drinks. all in all, the three of us probably had 12-15 drinks combined (Thad had another absinth shot), and we didn't pay a cent. not one. amazing.

speaking of free drinks, i found myself sitting next to the aforementioned old lady. she was drunk as hell, and talking to anyone that would listen. naturally, she starts talking to me in Czech. i did not understand a single word she said, but that didn't stop me from speaking to her as well. she eventually handed me her booze - which was a single shot of vodka. i said, yes. it smells wonderful, and handed it back to her. then she gave it back and made the drink drink gesture. so i downed this old lady's shot of vodka. then she just laughed and laughed and laughed. it was so bizarre. but i love old ladies in bars. and by old, i mean old. she was probably in her late 60's to mid 70's. drinking. she didn't leave until three am.

speaking of not leaving, we didn't leave until about six in the morning. at about four, may i reiterate that this was a Monday night, now a Tuesday morning, this group of Czechs walks in. we immediately became fast friends, and we just shot the shit with them. Thad used his amended Czech on them (turns out, according to Patrik, the Lonely Planet phrase Thad memorized did not mean "I would love to get high" but "I would love marijuana heroin" which is much, much different. It was our first night out really partying (the night before we were with a bunch of teenaged (by that i mean 19) NYU students. they were cool chicks, but you don't travel to hang out with more americans. anyway, it was our first night of really partying, but it may have been our best. and if grant hadn't monopolized the phrase book, maybe some of us could have spit some game too. fucking cheater.

the crappy thing was that we did leave around six. there's a picture of us below that is taken as the sun was coming up. what made that crappy was that we had a train to catch in five hours and i hadn't packed. i had one more smazyny syr on the way home (bad idea at six AM to eat a fried cheese sandwich dripping in Czech mayo) and packed in a horrible drunken haze while these two recharged. bad times right there. bad, bad times. thank god for the three vodka red bulls i had for free.

next stop: Bratislava.

Prague Scenery, or as I like to call it, Prague-ery

2006-04-27T12:22:00.000+07:00

Prague debauchery, or as I like to call it, Pragueachery

2006-04-27T12:20:00.000+07:00

dramatis personae ii - Grant Minnis

2006-04-25T16:41:00.000+07:00

Our third part was Mister Grant Minnis of Brokeback Mountain, Idaho. Don’t be fooled by the pose he’s striking here on a rooftop in Venice – he’s actually very, very dumb.

Nonetheless, Grant is nothing less than the future of advertising. Not only did he win an Addy, but he also won an Andy in “Fastest to suck a golf ball through a 90 foot garden hose” which definitely bodes well for his career in the industry.

Anyway, in contrast to Thad, I’ve only known Grant for about a year, but in that time I’ve learned from him that people that come from red states are sometimes actually tolerable. Not only that, but his experience as an Eagle Scout made him the default alpha dog, thanks to an uncanny ability to navigate foreign cities while drunk, and possession of a bowie knife at all times. He got it on the plane by sticking it where the sun don't shine.

Name: Grant Minnis
Nicknames: Minnis 2 Society, Minniscule Genitalia, Grant CS, Idaho, Eagle Scout, Frat Boy
Status: Single, but probably with ya momz right now.
Personal Quote: “It's just a beast under your bed. In your closet, in your head."

Favortie food: deer, bear, wild boar, the Dodo, Komodo Dragon, whale shark, shark fin soup, turtle soup, rabbit, spotted owl, king cobra, king cobra malt liquor, anything on the verge of extinction
Favorite books: Ogilve on Advertising, the Lonely Planet guide to southeast Asian sex tourism, the Lonely Planet guide to eastern European sex tourism, Hunting for Dummies
Favorite music: Selloutica, Li’l John, Gasolina, Ted Nugent
Favorite movies: Titanic, The Man in the Iron Mask, The Beach, What’s Eating Gilbert Grape? William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, Catch me if you Can, Gangs of New York, the Deer Hunter, Red Dawn, anything starring NRA frontman Charlton Heston
Favorite tv: Family Guy, Seventh Heaven, the Hunting Channel

Hobbies: bow hunting, spear fishing, bear baiting, glass eating, sawing off shotguns, rasslin’
Pet peeves: gun control lobbyists, cub scout dropouts, obnoxious Austrian chicks, weebloes
Turn ons: doner kebabs, doors and doorknobs
Turn offs: sliding doors, immaturity

I have to admit that Grant and I hastily arranged his arrival in Prague. For one thing, he never emailed me his itinerary. All I knew was that he was coming in Saturday morning. I gave him directions and told him I'd meet him outside the Metro. Of course, that Saturday I woke up to possibly the most snow I've ever seen in my life. I didn't put two and two together that his flight might have been delayed (which it was, for I believe nine hours or something). He didn't have my email address, and I didn't have his - we communicated via myspace. So I had to keep going downtown to McDonald's of all places to access the internet to check my myspace account to see if he was still alive. And what looks stupider than someone running into McDonald's through a freaking snowstorm, walking up to the counter, and not paying for food, but internet service? And then, to exacerbate the idiocy, immediately accessing myspace? jeez. Well, that's what happened.

Luckily Grant eventually got to us, and even discovered a bar about a block and a half away that I never knew about (which apparently is a Nazi/criminal hangout, czech out my replacement's blog: http://wehavethemostfun.blogspot.com/2006/04/ive-had-this-joke-for-while-that-its.html) and called me, and then that was that. It was time for the debauchery to start in full effect.

dramatis personae i - Thad Davis

2006-04-25T16:26:00.000+07:00

So it’s about time for me to go into my swing through Eastern Europe and Italy. But like all good dramas, an introduction, complete with dramatis personae, is necessary. So here I am, introducing this cast of characters (two) to the world, to help you, the reader, get even more insight into why I am the way I am.

First off is my friend Thad Davis. He flew into Prague on my last day of work, March 10th. I’ve known Thad since the first grade, and I find it interesting that he came to visit me, mainly because he’s the only friend I never invited via email to come Czech out the Eastern bloc. Why? Because he doesn’t have an email address. Yes, there are still people in this day and age that don’t communicate via cyberspace, and he’s one of the dwindling few.

I have plenty of friends that I’ve known for awhile, but Thad is my oldest one. Being that we met in first grade, that makes 21 years that we’ve known each other. We grew up about six or seven houses apart, and if you were to combine the number of times we’ve played each other in Ken Griffey Jr. Major League Baseball, Tecmo Super Bowl, and RBI Baseball 3, it would honestly be in the five figures.

So here.

Name: Thad Marion Davis
Status: Single, but probably with ya momz right now.
Personal Quote: “I slide in easily, dry or greasily.”

Favortie food: beer, beer nuts, beer cheese, root beer floats, prosciutto
Favorite books: Moneyball, books on beer, The 1989 Oakland Athletics yearbook, the Rum Diaries, The Red Badge of Courage, Nails by Lenny Dykstra, Juiced, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Favorite music: Phish, Black Star, Blackalicious, Black Rob, DMX, Westside Connection, Lucas (with the lid off), Kris Kristofferson, The Super Bowl Shuffle (1985 Chicago Bears)
Favorite movies: The President's Neck is Missing, Andre the Giant We Hardly Knew Ye, Christmas Ape, Hail to the Chimp, Christmas Ape Goes to Summer Camp, Locker Room Towel Fights: The Blinding of Larry Driscoll
Favorite tv: Sopranos, Mister Belvedere, Saved by the Bell

Hobbies: Ultimate Frisbee, sleep, drinking, high stakes gambling, duck hunting, curling, spooning, spitting puns out, spitting game, being drunk and hungover at the same time
Pet peeves: shwag, hangovers, school, Joe Montana Sports Talk Football 3 (which I got him for Christmas 1995 - the damn announcers give commentary about 13 seconds after the fact. that still doesn't change the fact that Joe Montana is the greatest quarterback of all time)
Turn ons: Eastern Europeans, hot baseball fans, Mariah Carey, naughty neckties
Turn offs: mean girls, coke whores

So the saga began with me, Thad, and a Czech phrasebook. In my ten weeks there, I think I picked up maybe a ten or twelve phrase Czech vocabulary. Here's a crash course:

Yes: Ano
No: I don't remember. Ne, I think. Damn, I suck.
Thank you: Djeukuje (pronounced "dyeh-kwii")
My name is Eric: Moy-ay ya-men-oh Eric (I can't spell this shit)
Na zdravî: To health! (traditional toast)
Goulash: Gulas
Beer: Pivo (Actually the first word I learned)
Please/You're welcome: Prosim

Ah, there's probably a bit more phrases I learned. But we weer sure to take the phrasebook out with us to maximize the potential for hijinx and trouble. Thad made sure to memorize one phrase, which according to the Lonely Planet, meant "I would love to get high."

So one night the two of us go to this posh bar called the martini bar. It was probably the coldest there since I had arrived - maybe a foot and a half of snow, probably -12 or so (Celsius, dammit). Hence, the bar was irritatingly empty. So we just pulled up to the bar and had a few cocktalis each and shot the shit with the bartenders, only one of which spoke English (and that was limited). He corrected Thad with the proper pronounciations, and kept the peanuts and gimlets flowing.

Fittingly, the Lonely Planet had the phrase "I am allergic to peanuts" conveniently listed. There was a time when the bartender was standing in front of us mixing a drink while Thad was scarfing down peanuts. Out of the blue, in Czech, Thad says, "I am allergic to peanuts." The bartender looked at him, saw a mouth full of peanuts, and just started laughing. It was good times. I recommend the Martini Bar to anyone going to Prague - it's very luxurious. Seems like it would be more fun with a good crowd in there. It's off of Old Town Square, behind the Wenceslaus statue's right shoulder. Those are terrible directions, but the best I got.

Also popular with Mister Davis was asking the waitresses, well, under his breath or to me, mind you, "Excuse me, Flo? What's the polévky of the day?" God, that never got old. Good times were had in Prague. They were probably our wildest as well.

Sometimes I feel like I don't have a partner

2006-04-20T14:21:00.000+07:00

So welcome to Bangkok, Thailand, the original City of Angels.

Yesterday I was walking when I happened by a street vendor selling a bunch of bandannas. Being that you sweat like a…well, I can’t think of any good metaphors to go here, I’ll throw some in at the bottom*** – being that you sweat profusely in the oppressive humidity of this country and the air is so dirty that sometimes you have to cover your mouth as you walk down the street (no surgical masks for me, SARS be damned), a handkerchief/bandanna on hand is probably a wise investment.

So anyway, I picked a boring old white and blue one and a black and white one that I thought was cool (and way metal) because it had skeletons on it. I tucked them in my backpack (total price: 40 baht, or one dollar) to retrieve when the time came.

Well this morning, I pulled them out of my bag before my walk to work, and I unfolded the black and white one only to see giant text down the middle reading “JUST BONE ME”. As if that wasn’t classy enough, the skeletons, upon further inspection, are all in varying sexual positions, alternating with tombstones that commemorate the memory of the deceased, The Boners.

Geez. So much for keeping a low profile.

Speaking of odd fashion statements, there was a guy in Kho Tao – a local, it seemed, that was wearing a shirt on the first day that said “Osama Bin Laden and the Twin Towers” and it had a picture of the former superimposed over a picture of the latter. It had almost a religoius feel to it. I had no idea what to make of this shirt. I still don’t. I wish I had taken his picture, but being that he might have been wearing it in honor of Mister Bin Laden, I opted not to take his picture before telling him I was an American, and hey, did you hear about the tactical nuclear strikes on Iran? By the way, I’m not coming back.

Also discovered in my daily wanderings – actually, it isn’t a daily thing, it just seems that way because I’ve had six days off since I got here – were several signs stating that a native English speaker was wanted for a teaching position. Being that a little bit of cash in the back pocket might be nice for those weekend trips to Laos and Burma (also known as Myanmar and not recommended as a place to go to), I do plan on leaving my name at several of them. My ex-girlfriend taught an ESL class once, and she said they just sat around reading the newspaper. It might be a good way to learn bits of Thai while spreading the wonderful world of ebonics to the developing regions of Southeast Asia.

By the way, I still have water in my ears. Someone please help.

***- as sweaty as a…
- black man in a Mississippi courthouse.
- actual pig in an actual blanket.
- Frenchman.
- penguin in the Mojave.
- bomb squad leader in a sweat factory.

Okay, that last one is the winner.

A semi-charmed kinda life

2006-04-17T19:39:00.000+07:00

one month, six days, five countries, seven cities, one island, and approximately 80,000 miles later...

greetings, loyal (five) readers. i'm pleased to report that after the lengthy hiatus from the legendary prague blague (soon to be renamed to perhaps the "kok blog" or "blog thaime"), i have settled comfortably in the land of smiles at win long place 1179/42 Soi Charoean Krung 47 Bangrak, Bangkok 10500 Thailand. And if you think i know how to pronounce my own street, you're sadly mistaken. but there's my address, you losers, for care packages, postcards, anthrax, and love letters.

so yeah, i'm typing this up on the 16th, and i've been here for over two weeks now. you'll have to forgive my absence, as much of my first week was spent either at work, lost, riding elephants, or hanging out with transsexuals. but here i am.

on my third day of work, i was informed that i had an entire week off for Songkran, the Thai New Year. being that i was still getting comfortable in the smoggy confines of Bangkok, i found that kind of annoying, namely because i didn't really have anyone to hang out with and they could have just started me on the 17th instead of putting me in the odd position of having a week's vacation after only a week on the job.

but after kicking myself in the head for being so stupid as to complain about a week of vacation, a wonderful revelation hit - that i was a damn idiot to be complaining about having a week of vacation.

you see, Thailand is one of the most travel-friendly countries in the world. i know this because of the abundance of white people i see everyday (many of which have dreadlocks, and i'm stating it now and forever that white people and dreadlocks should never, ever, ever mix, and the lone exception to this rule might be the 1998 version of vanilla ice, and that should say enough. come to think of it, let's just say that only black people should have dreadlocks. i'm sorry, that's just the way it is. i'm willing to start an online petition for this, only because i'm sure we could get 3.5 million hits in the first day). so basically i could have gone north and gone elephant trekking through the rainforest (my personal favorite topographical landscape) or i could have gone south and learned to scuba dive in 35º water among whale sharks, turtles, and barracuda.

so i opted for the latter.

for those of you not lucky enough to get my smug vacation responder from last sunday until yesterday, i was in sunny, secluded kho tao for a week, and congratulations to me, i'm now a certified advanced open water diver.

kho tao (pictures below) is recognized as being one of the places in thailand that foreigners (farang in Thai) will visit, enjoy, and then decide never to come back from. i asked my assistant dive master of the 5,000 inhabitants of the island, how many he reckoned were foreigners. he told me his first guess was 4,000. he later lowered that to about a third, but i'd have to say that it's someplace in the middle.

let me just state the ease of staying here for an extended time. my room, granted as part of a dive package, was 200 baht per night. the rough exchange rate with the dollar is 40:1.

that's right, five dollars a night. not to mention green curry for 40 baht, som tum (papaya salad) for 25 baht, and mango shakes for 20 baht. i have roughly five g's in the stock market, depending on what day you ask me. if i were to liquidate those particular assets (and disappear from the student loan police), i could probably live on that money for four months. it would be longer, but every thirty days you'd have to do a visa run to myanmar or malaysia. but you get a job, you make 11 baht a day, you sit on your savings for the big things, and yeah, it's possible.

my divemaster was a danish guy named johan. his girlfriend was an english divemaster from england. my assistant dive master was from rhode island (who lived in the bay area for about four years). everyone at reception was australian. you get my point. and if you think for a second that i didn't give an extended consideration to dropping it all and becoming one of them - you're sadly mistaken. again.

it's one of those things. you meet someone on the road, you swap stories, and they'll tell you something cool, like "i was a diving instructor in southeast asia for a few years" or "i worked at an elephant orchestra for a few months" and you say back "wow, i'm jealous, i wish i could have done that." when you're confronted with that reality, sometimes you realize that if you do indeed wish you could do that, you could. given that i'm now an advanced open water diver, i could theoretically be a divemaster in two years, and i would then be johan. i would eat five times a day for five dollars total. i'd swim with barracuda, and i would give lifelong memories to a bunch of lame tourists and expatriates that come over because lonely planet said to. and best of all, i could "live deliberately, and front only the essential facts of life." (thoreau)

nonetheless, that life, while appealing, is probably not in the cards for me right now. but add "kho tao divemaster" to the long and growing list of contingency plans in case this whole advertising thing doesn't work out. here's an update:

-nomadic esl teacher
-proprietor of a venetian piano bar
-proprietor of a venetian butcher shop
-piano teacher (i just have to stay one lesson in front of my students)
-low level minor league bullpen catcher

i dunno. look, i'll let the pictures do the talking, i admit i'm a bit rusty with the blog writing. i'll say these factoids before i hit the hay:

one, kho tao had some of the most stunning sunsets i've ever seen in my life, and living on the west coast all of my life (until last september), i've seen some pretty damn good ones. but nothing will ever beat descending into 30º water (celsius, dammit) with a blazing orange sunset off to the west then ascending 45 minutes later to a full moon rising over two tropical island peaks, a lighting storm far off into the horizon, and a clear night sky full of stars. utterly unforgettable.

two, thursday was Songkran. Songkran has humble roots in Thai tradition, as is my understanding. This was typically a time when Buddha statues were bathed and monks and elders received a sign of respect when youths would sprinkle water over their hands. anyway, over the years, it's basically turned into a giant water fight, with everyone armed with either a bucket of water or a high powered water gun. i bought one of the latter and went exploring that day, and came home about ten pounds heavier thanks to being drenched in all my clothes and my backpack on. it was probably the most fun i've ever had solo in my life. little kids, adults, everyone is into it. i would have taken pictures, but my camera is not water proof. i definitely recommend a mid-april visit to thailand for this reason. and for the record, being squirted in the eyes with salt water from a super soaker fucking stings like hell.

three, i swam with a shark. allegedly, it was a baby, but it was the biggest fish we saw in nine dives. it was beautiful down there. absolutely incredible. words will not do it justice. clearer than an aquarium.

four: total price, accommodations (five nights) transportation (two bus rides of seven hours, two boat rides of two hours):$40. the dive course was a few hundred dollars, but it was still much cheaper than it would be anywhere else, and that was for the basic certification course and the advanced course.

five: it's really cool to hang out with other travelers, particularly when none of them are american. i hung out with two polish sisters, a french girl and her danish boyfriend, a german girl was my scuba buddy (always dive in pairs, yeah it's a lame term), and a chinese couple. awesome. and the best part was, unlike europe, none of them asked me if i liked george w. bush. and yes, i know i owe a lengthy report on europe. it's forthcoming. you know i hate writing about "today i did this, last week i saw this, today i bought this." that's hard. if i'm gonna babble, it has to be a bit more abstract. nonetheless, i do want the memories down for posterity's sake.

so the blog is back for now. i have more distractions then i did in prague (espn, the stars network, bbc news, transsexual hookers), but i will write as often as the writing bone is tickled.

that's enough for now. here's my ten favorite kho tao pictures.

Koh Tao means Turtle Island. Garcon means boy.

2006-04-17T19:34:00.000+07:00

Koh Tao, Thailand

2006-04-17T19:24:00.000+07:00

blog hiatus

2006-03-10T22:19:00.000+07:00

dear readers,

thank you for your support and comments over the last ten weeks here in Prague. sadly, it is time to pack up the Prague Blog and move on to bigger and better things.

Nonetheless, I assure you that the blog is only on hiatus, and that in due time it will return. Who knows, even periodic updates from the European mainland will be forthcoming. I can't tell the future. all i know is that it's so bright, i have to wear shades.

wish me luck, and postcards are coming. i swear.

Ghersi.

Caleb.

shit.

and guess weiner's baby's birthday, dammit.

Debbie does Hostels

2006-03-09T15:26:00.000+07:00

so i have to admit that i'm leaning heavily towards not going back to school once this Bangkok ridiculousness is over.

someone needs to tell me if it's my raging ego, healthy confidence, or pure, unadulterated hubris that's telling me that the work i will have done by July will be strong/smart enough to get me a job. well, i suppose that's an impossible question right now seeing that like 8% of my portfolio is done, so maybe i should shut up about that. i don't know. why the hell am i posting impossible questions?

screw that. we'll cross that bridge once we get there.

if anyone out there has "done" europe (not in the way Debbie did - ka-ching!), i'd be interested to hear your input on the itinerary i'm piecing together to follow over the next two and a half weeks. here's the tentative schedule.

My friend Thad - my oldest friend and also the only person left in America without an email address - arrives on Friday afternoon. about 15 hours later, my friend Grant (not the former Grant from London, this one's not a hack) flies in from Miami (in which case he might be in for a rude awakening). I'll entertain them for a few days with traditional Czech dance and handcraft hours (learned both at work) here in Prague. We can live like kings for four days and only spend $12 a day. Well, that's without sightseeing I suppose. But it would include getting really stuffed on meats and gravy and washing it all down with delicious beer.

So okay then. The festivities start March 11.

I figure that we can spend three or four days here. Czech out Prague Castle, go see a puppet show (marionettes are big time here), drink some Absinth (apparently it's served strongest in this country), attend my online fantasy baseball draft, gamble, take a riverboat cruise, meet some girl about to leave on the train at sunrise and spend all night falling in love and walking and talking with her, you know, things like that.

After that, Budapest. Maybe for one full day and one night.

I met this guy at a bar on Sunday from Holland. After he bought me my seventh drink, we got to the topic of girls. He told me that "Girls in Budapest have lower self-esteems, so a well placed compliment can you know..."

It was at once the sleaziest and most useful comment I've ever heard in my life. That's not bad since about a month ago I posted the best and worst quote I've ever heard in my life. This one is much, much more lecherous though.

I actually read someplace also that the goulash in Budapest is spicier than the Czech goulash. Being that I love spiciness, I'll have to try that.

So Prague. Budapest. Back to Prague to pick up my 90 pounds of luggage that these suckers have to carry for me.

Berlin was highly recommended to me both by my mom and my friend Chad back in Chicago, for a thriving art scene and a strong party scene. I think Berlin might be worth at least as long as Budapest, if only to find the world's best David Hasselhoff memorabilia. And if I'm to buy any, it's an imperative that it be neither Knight Rider nor Baywatch related. Strictly singing, baby. Strictly singing. Maybe I can get a shirt with a picture of him with that fish in his mouth. And if you don't know what I'm talking about, hit me up and I'll send you a link. Or I'll leave it in the comments field later.

Prague. Budapest. Prague. Berlin.

I wanted to get to Amsterdam eventually to try to seduce this girl I know that lives there named Jen Chen, but she just told me that she's packing her micro minis and her fishnets and going to her boyfriend's in London for the rest of her break. I don't know about you, but I think that's pretty weak.

Anyway, I still want to go there because Chen said we could crash in her pad since both her and her roommate paid for the month but will both have vacated the premises. That's cool because it's free housing as opposed to hostels. There won't be any babes to seduce us before taking us back someplace to practice torture on us. And by the way, thank you to all 90 of you back home that warned me about the hostels by relating my life to the movie. I appreciated that the first time. And yeah, i used the word "babes" back there.

Amsterdam. Ride some bikes, eat some waffles and cheese, party, go look at the hookers, try to use photoshopped shake n bake coupons on the hookers, try to pretend i'm denzel washington's son to the hookers, take pictures with the hookers, rent a tandem bicycle and a hooker at the same time to ride around town, that kind of thing. that's what you do in amsterdam, right? nothing else? good.

don't want to miss a thing. as aerosmith said.

after that, it's up in the air. i actually don't have my ticket to bangkok yet because i'm waiting for funds to be moved around. it's probably cheapest out of Rome or London, my teacher went there from Düsseldorf, but I don't even know what country that's in (i'm guessing germany).

i don't know anything about europe. i just learned today that Holland = the Netherlands. They're the same thing. that's insane. did you all know that? why does it have two names? that's lame.

Prague. Budapest. Prague. Berlin. Amsterdam.

so i guess that'll take care of several days - that's about a week right there. if i fly out of Rome, we'll head south. if London, then maybe north to ireland or scotland, although i don't think there's a railroad from london to scotland (or is there? i mean, there's a train from london to paris. hell if i know).

speaking of Paris, I would love to go there. I'd also love to see Venice. But...well, it's not going to happen with two other dudes. Hell naw. I'll go someday with one of you lucky ladies.

Part of me wants to go to Lichtenstein and try to walk across the entire country just so i can say i've walked across an entire country, but that might just be lame. My aunt recommended Geneva. I don't know. you know what? the possibilities are endless and that's what makes life so fucking beautiful. sorry for the language, but i feel strongly about this.

i have a feeling alot of debauchery is going to be involved. i should take my vitals now, like that guy in Super Size Me does before eating exclusively McDonald's for 30 days.

Okay though - I seriously have only half of my free time planned. My creative director said I could get to Bangkok by taking the Russian railroad to Siberia then hopping another line down south through Cambodia (seriously, who the F suggests going through Cambodia for ANYTHING) into Bangkok. He also said it would take about eight days and I might lose all of my possessions in the process. But you know, what a story that would make.

I dunno. This is probably my last chance to see Europe on a level like this for a long time. So any and all suggestions from you world travelers would be fantastic. The three of us are open to suggestions. We're playing it by ear. as biggie once rapped - "Treat it like boxing/Stick and move!/Stick and move!"

unfortunate things we'll be missing:
The World Cup - that's in July
The Running of the Bulls - that's in June, I think
The tomato fight in Tomatina, Italy - probably also in the Summer

nonetheless, the adventure continues....

house in the woods

2006-03-08T15:40:00.000+07:00

you jackals, here's your freaking double burger. er...blog entry.

i'm happy to report two things. one, the aforementioned "drunken tornado" never had to make an appearance over the weekend. i'm happy to report that any drinking i did was done in moderation and with the responsibility of a man wise beyond my years, and the charming and engaging Eric that most of my contemporaries and blog readers are accustomed to seeing was in full effect.

secondly...ah shit. i forgot.

so last weekend was agency getaway weekend. and being that this is being typed on a tuesday night, that should give y'all an indication of the recovery time i needed before my mashed potato brain could actually spit out the events that transpired with any sort of clarity whatsoever.

every year, Mark/BBBDO Prague rents out a cabin for its 55-60 employees for a weekend. being czechs, they do a hell of alot of drinking. they go over their work from the past year, they party, and they ski, snowboard, sled, and whatever else you crazy white folk are supposed to do in the snow. i don't know. look at me. do i look like a skier to you?

actually, someone at work mentioned that everyone "zorbits" when they get up there. i was a bit alarmed at the prospect of a party where everyone goes around pressing their lips to on other people's bellies and blowing to make loud flatulent sounds, but i figured hey, if that's how you party czech style, i'm down. besides, it was a bit arousing. yeah, you heard me.

alas, "zorbiting" is when you get strapped up inside of a gigantic bouncy ball and rolled down a hill. i don't know what makes that so fun, but i must tell you, about the zorbit balls: they are so choice. if you have the means, i highly recommend picking one up.

I have trouble recollecting things in chronological order, so i'll base things around three of the weekend's most memorable quotes:

Eric: How did Fortuna go?
Mila: F***ING ASSHOLES!

so Jenn and I, being the special ed crew of BBBDO, hitched the last train outta clarksville with Mila, the head account planner (i think) of the agency. we'd worked with him quite a bit, and he's one of the more talkative people in the agency for sure. one of our last clients was Fortuna, which was a betting counter for the gambling addicts of the greater Prague area. Jenn and I have a habit of being closed out of the loop once our work goes to the client, so i figured this was a good time to make some small talk while catching up on the current events of the agency.

unfortunately, this seemed to strike a nerve with Mila, who did actually raise his voice when I asked him this. apparently, the client decided to leave our work behind and just run the same ads that they run in Slovakia. that's no big deal, i suppose, but you put a whole bunch of work into a project, you don't really want it to just be thrown by the wayside because the client changes their mind at the last second. but oh well. nature of the agency.

that really wasn't interesting at all. but it was funny that he yelled out two obscenities like that.

Jen: I don't know where my pants are.

well, we got to the cabin at about 15:00 on friday afternoon. everyone took awhile to file in, during which people just sat around drinking and ignoring us. but that was cool because we just kind of sat there slowly and slowly drinking. at this point, i was fully expecting the drunken tornado to be let loose. but things kept happening to slow my roll.

one, they had the aforementioned presentation about the company, the numbers, motivation for the new fiscal year, blah blah blah, the shit you get into advertising in order to avoid. being that it was in czech, i fell asleep. mmm...glorious, glorious sleep.

wake up. dinner. drinks.

if you recall, it was mentioned to us that there would be karaoke at this brouhaha, which led me to believe that the eric that hit london just one week prior was going to be the same eric to hit the czech alps. i was especially psyched to hear that it would be "karaoke like nothing you've ever experienced before."

unfortunately, it was movie karaoke. you get a script, you mute the movie, you fill in the blanks. there were about 12 clips, and two were in english: the "biggus dickus" scene from "life of brian" and a scene from pulp fiction.

pulp fiction is possibly the most quotable movie of the last 25 years (seriously, what's more quotable? jerry maguire, big lebowski, anchorman, The Passion, and if any of you say Napoleon Dynamite, so help me god, i will fly over and beat you with a tire iron). so they could have picked a number of scenes to do: the mcdonald's dialogue, the "english, mother f******, do you speak it!" scene, the "tell that bitch to be cool!" scene, there are so so so many. so many. i know baby. you'd dig it the most.

so please, someone tell me why whoever cut this game picked the Marcellus Wallace anal rape scene. Please. Just because of the "get medieval on his ass" line? that's so not worth it. it opened with bruce willis walking in the door, marcellus wallace looking back, bruce willis slashing up the guy from behind the counter, and then talking to Zed.

"You want that gun, don't you, Zed?"

He taunts him a little bit and then Ving Rhames shoots him and says the medieval line. there's like 45 seconds of pained, ball-gagged grunting, and those bruce willis lines, and the ving rhames line. lame. that was the only opportunity i saw that could really have been fun (you can't do that life of brian scene any justice) and they picked a horrible scene. of course, the czech movies they did might have been completely brilliant, but how in the hell would i know?

so an hour of this silliness certainly did slow the pace down.

eventually, they just went into straight partying.

for those of you that enjoy drinking, be warned. czech liquor is very, very sweet. i can't stand it. their beer has a well deserved reputation for being delicious, but the liquor i cannot hang with. sure, i had like four shots, but it was over the course of...holy crap, they technically started drinking at 4pm and ended at 4am. that's 12 hours of drinking. damn.

anyway, jenn decided to go bond with the three highest ranked men in the room, our two creative directors and Mila. i think they each gave her a shot (on top of what we'd been downing). i sat down to kinda chill out, but next thing i know, she's dragging our CD Martin on the dance floor and they're the only ones out there. i figure that's cool.

30 minutes later i look over, and they're both passed out. mind you, the night is young. it's like 12:30.

so poor jen, i'll spare her the details, had to be tucked away into a bed for the night.

the thing kept raging until past four. Martin actually rose from the dead and partied much longer into the night. that's what makes him the boss.

anyway, jenn was tucked away into a room upstairs. one of the nice account girls put her to bed, taking off her shoes, socks, and jeans (which had puke on them). somehow, some way, in between the hours of 4:30 and 8:30 AM, she ended up downstairs on the couch. we still don't know how. actually, nobody knew. and that "I don't know where my pants are" quote was quite classic.

as for me, i spent a good portion of the night discussing how you could buy monkeys at the pet store in prague, why i thought george bush is an idiot (god, that keeps coming up), and heavy metal with various people i'd never said a word to prior to that night. it was good times.

Eric: Hey, there's red in here.

the next day, in the mid afternoon, i was looking for a snack. being that the kitchen was closed and the bar was my only option to eat, i had to opt for a new adventure: czech bar food. or, to be more specific, "a pickled white cheese" (that was the best translation i could get). it wasn't bad, actually. it was more of a spread that the guy had to scoop out with some odd contraption. it had onions and a jalapeño pepper. over the course of cutting it up to spread on my bread, we discovered red on the inside.

as if the sight of a coagulated mucus looking slab of pickled cheese wasn't enough, they had to make it look like it was bleeding when i cut it open. delicious.

nonetheless, i ate it and i liked it.

at about midday on saturday, i was riding up this mountain on one of those mini snowmobiles, catching air every few seconds and peering out into the great white expanse of the czech mountains, and i got this inspired feeling that i was at a place and time where i was doing something and experiencing something that i would never go through again. and honestly, that's a great feeling.

10,000 more words

2006-03-08T15:33:00.000+07:00

so school i didn't show up, it f*cked my flow up

2006-03-03T15:57:00.000+07:00

so here's two announcements. one is major. one is minor.

um. well, i'll just copy and paste this:

Sawasdee ka Eric,

Wow Congratulations for silver of the San Francisco Addy
Awards!

Welcome to McCann Worldgroup Thailand.
I am very pleased to let you know that your internship has been
confirmed. The starting date will be April 3rd, 2006.

Mccann Worldgroup Thailand is located at 29th-30th floor Bangkok City
Tower, South Sathorn Road.

When you arrive Bangkok please call me at XX XXX XXXX ext: 151.

Cheers,
Ann

Okay. so. That's that.

After I got this email, these were my options:
One, stay in school. Stay an MA"S" student and go to the London program, which was definitely a worthwhile choice. My friends have learned alot there. It's very work intensive, and it was actually my first choice to go to this quarter, evven though Prague has been fantastic. Let's not talk about cost quite yet.

Two, take a leave of absence and do this Bangkok thing (all out of pocket, mind you). Go back to school in the summer, probably in San Francisco, and then get this stupid portfolio done and have a job by late 2006 or early 2007 with the guidance of classes and what not.

So then you do what business heads like to refer to as a CBA, or a cost/benefit analysis. Yes, I describe myself as whimsical and irresponsible, but the truth is that the wheels are always churning. I enjoy CBA's.

So here's what the cost/benefit analysis of London concluded: I go to Europe. I maybe get some more work done for my book. I hang out with lots of new people, make new friends because everyone speaks English, I get verbally berated from the Simon Cowells of the ad industry (this actually is a benefit; I want harsh criticism, as long as it's not completely arbitrary), and then I go to SF, on schedule, and graduate in September, ready to take on the world. I eat fish n chips and doners every day and gain 90 pounds, and I look even more like the Notorious BIG when I get back.

Thailand: I accomplish my goal of circumnavigating the globe. I (hopefully) gain a different perspective on tackling the industry. I make money on the side by pimping hoes and clockin' a grip like my name was Dolemite and by re-selling fake Rolexes at 678% markup on ebay. I hopefully get a Thai piece produced, then can have a Czecch piece and a Thai piece in my book and who the hell isn't going to hire someone with a Thai and Czech piece in their book (so long as they're good)? It's really potentially very awesome.

What the decision basically came down to was life experience. Which did I want to experience more? In a perfect world, the answer is both. But time and money are of the essence, I want a job, I want to live it up as much as possible prior to that job and the two/three weeks of vacation it allows for such adventure seeking.

I don't want to say my portfolio take a back seat to life experience, but it does. But at the same time, they go hand in hand. We can talk about the fundamental dynamics of creativity some other time. In the end, I just wanted Thailand more. Asia appeals to me more than Europe, and I freaking love Europe. I loved London when I was there. But I'm going to have to trust my instincts here, and they say go the different route. Go eat 40¢ noodles and come home with a suitcase full of replica NBA jerseys. And that's the plan. I start April 3. I have a place reserved to live (sans kitchen). I can make it work somehow.

Anyone wants to visit me in Thailand April 3 - June 30, let me know. I'm your man.

So here's the second piece of news:

Today work is a half day. It's agency getaway weekend here at BBBDO Prague, and they're taking us along on their annual sojourn to the Czech Mountains.

Being that I've said a total of 80 non-related work words to anyone in this entire office over the course of nine weeks, things could be interesting if all my plans pan out and the drunken tornado is unleashed about 10 hours from now (a distinct possibility). Allegedly, there is karaoke (yes. again), sledding, games, and all that jazz. Being that Czechs seem to be fond of drinking, I assume beer will be involved. And yes, it's going to be like dorm life where I walk in with my roommate and everyone already seems to know each other, and we look like two freaking morons.

So we have devised a drinking game: every cold shoulder/dirty look = one shot. every ciao or smile = two shots.

those of you that have partied with me are no doubt painfully aware that excess amounts of alcohol either make me very friendly or very belligerent. i think we'll all be pleasantly surprised at whichever is released later. it will all be documented.

Reader of the Day: the Khrza

2006-03-03T15:41:00.000+07:00

So if there was ever a real life Howard Roark (a postcard to the first person who gets that reference) of Miami Ad "School", it's today's featured reader, Khara McNeil, aka the Khrza aka Khara Digital.

There's this story going around that Khara, very proud of the work she's put into making ads at Miami Ad "School" brought eight pieces to our school's director to turn into the San Francisco Addys, which is an accolade that, while nice, is about as valuable as the ashtray I just stole from McDonald's. Nonetheless, recognition is nice, I suppose, especially for those of us looking for real jobs sometime this year.

Eight pieces. Our director picks zero to turn in.

One nice thing about Miami Ad "School" is that they need us as much as we need them. Award Winning Work reflects well on the school. Hence, when there's award show-worthy pieces, the school pays the entry fees for what they want turned in. Our director rejected all of our hero's work. All of it. That's probably a combined what...90 hours of work? Especially with someone as meticulous as Khrza here can be. So you can imagine how insulting that is. I'd be insulted, but I didn't bother turning anything in because I don't pay attention to this stuff (incidentally, Grant and I won a silver, but all props go to him because I contributed .01% of the final cut). So our hero says "fuck that guy, i'll turn this shit in myself" (knowing Khara, it was much, much more profane). She pays the entry fees herself. And she doesn't just win, she dominates. She totally dominates. Six awards. Two golds. Probably more, I don't remember. That's really believing in your work. So Khara, you're a modest person I know, and you will deflect any praise I give you in person or via email, so here are your accolades from me that cannot be rebuffed or rejected. Now people that don't even know you are impressed. Who knows. Maybe Dan Wieden is reading this. Or Alex Bogusky.

Hey Bogusky: Overrated, buddy. Over freaking rated.

Props.

Khara McNeil
height: 112 cm
weight: 12 kg
i still haven't figured out the metric system. oh well. four more months. more on that later.

favorite food: indian, vegetarian, men, indian vegetarian men

hobbies: collecting awards, making losers eat their words, drinking into oblivion, smoking cigarettes, stumbling around, photoshopping until sunrise, calling everyone a hack, calling herself a hack, the H.F., cockblocking her husband, ichat transferring really ghetto shizzo, writing better than people that are supposed to be good at writing, wearing high heels with straps and pointy shoes, being better than everyone in this hack "school", being shockingly profane.

favorite books: liner notes, Wu-Tang Forever, The Gospel According to the Gza
favorite movies: "Stop Snitching", "I Got the Hook-Up" , "Bones" , "Snoop Dogg Presents 'Girls Gone Wild Goes Down Under'", Amelie
favorite music: Jewelz, "Silly Ho" by TLC, New Edition, gangsta shit
favorite tv: BET, UPN, The Cooking Channel

status: married/swings
drinks: i think everything
smokes: three packs a day
drugs: i think everything

pet peeves: Anglo Saxons not named Derek, hacks, hacks with grudges, people blogging semi-controversial things ambiguously, short hacks with grudges

turn ons: Carmelo Anthony, cornrows, militants, do-rags, gats, bling, bling bling, Mad Dog 20/20, drinking Sisco with some freaks from 'frisco, belligerence, dorks.

turn offs: Jake the Snake Plummer, incompetent football coaches (the two of us were once at Jeanty at Jack's, an upscale French restaurant in San Francisco's Financial District, talking sports with the bartender. He mentioned I think an old CU football coach and Khara screamed out a string of expletives that would make anyone revolted, let alone blush. the whole place stopped and stared. it was so great. it was so, so great. I remember these things, Khara. that's my job), TooShort.

favorite commercial: anything starring Carmelo Anthony

Mr. Saturday Night Special

2006-03-03T15:38:00.000+07:00

a friend of mine back home, upon noting my propensity for under-the-breath smartass remarks in class, once called me a "passive aggressive attention seeker." i don't think that' necessarily true. but one thing is for certain: if you were to see me karaoke, along with my friends grant and dan (yes, you too, dan), you wouldn't agree with that. you'd refer to us as incredibly aggressive attention seekers.

so thanks to a bottle of Glen's Vodka and a free Saturday night in the UK, I've added London, England to the list of places that have been privy to my unique brand of karaoke. that list, in chronological order and counting only public places, now goes like this:

San Jose, CA (Great America: "Dream a Little Dream of Me")
Los Angeles, CA (Korea Town, not really public, but oh well)
Berkeley, CA (Kip's: "Hit Me Baby One More Time" with a bit of impromptu standup prior)
San Francisco, CA (The Dot Bar, The Mint, Silver Clouds, Freemont Café, that one Tendernob joint with the freaks whose name escapes me right now)
San Diego, CA (The Lamplighter: "Glory Days")
Chicago, IL (Louie's: lots of stuff "Don't It Make My Brown Eyes Blue" "Picture")
Lincoln, NE (Cheerleader's: "Afternoon Delight", "Freedom '90", "Against All Odds")

and now, we've gone international thanks to this random bar in Zone 1 of London.

Dude, London is the most confusing city I've ever seen. My mom asked me if it reminded me of San Francisco. Well, yes, maybe if you took San Francisco and then dropped Miami, Detroit, and Milwaukee on top of it, gave everyone accents, and then made all the lines in the roads squiggly instead of straight.

Jeez. Am I getting dumber? Is "squiggly" even a word? The lines on the street in London are not straight. That's my point. The airport is as big as Fresno, California, there are weird street signs about "Humps Next 45 feet" and "43 injuries here in last 11 months" or something like that, and the Underground thing is the most elaborate public transportation I've ever seen, by far.

Nonetheless, I want to state here and now that I believe in karma. You need to respect the natural order and balance in the universe. Equilibrium. You do something bad, it's going to come back to you. You throw a stick in Jon Gant's bicycle spokes to make him fly off in front of everyone after soccer practice in 1991, then in 1994 you're going to get videotaped urinating in your pants at summer camp when someone dips your hand in hot water when you're sleeping. Get my point? And yes, when you polish an entire bottle of some monstrosity called "Glen's Vodka" with one other person and keep saying "Why am I not drunk yet? Why am I not drunk enough? Let's get a shot," then, well my friend, things are going to get very ugly, and they're going to get very ugly very soon. Especially when your belly is full of Moroccan squid, Moroccan crab, hot pepper, and about nine pounds of fish 'n' chips that had been swimming in delicious balsamic vinegar. But more on this later.

So Saturday night in London made up in alcohol consumption for what it lacked in magnitude compared with Friday night. There were no Kiwi Cowboy punks, African giraffe slayers, or other assorted characters when we went out. Just me and my two boys.

Special thanks to Shelly here for googling the address to the bar for us when we called home. I don't know why we went out to find this bar when all we knew was that it started with a Z and the Underground stop started with an F. Yeah, sure. It's only the most massive megalopolis in Europe, if not the world. How hard can it be to find one bar without the name and address? Sure. Idiots. Alcohol isn't liquid courage. It's something that exacerbates idiocy.

So thanks, Shelly.

The three of us were pointed in the right direction and we found the bar. It was shockingly low key.

Okay, listen. No karaoke bar should ever be described as low-key. I don't care if it's all Japanese businessmen (yes, stereotype), Brits just out for a pint, or a bunch of Filipino mafia members running a front for illegal backroom cockfights. Karaoke is supposed to be loud, and it's supposed to be freaking proud. So let's just say the decibel level was probably tripled when the three of us walked in. And...shit. I can't remember all the songs we sang. Grant, Dan, fill in the blanks.

I think I started. In this order (from what I recall), we went:

Eric - Build Me Up, Buttercup (the Foundations)
Dan - True (Spandau Ballet)
Grant - something by Frank Sinatra??? (in response to that chick's boyfriend?)
Eric - Love Hurts (Nazareth)
Grant - Don't Look Back in Anger (Oasis)
Eric/Birthday Girl - Champagne Supernova (Oasis)

several interesting things happened over the course of this singing.

one) during my crowd pleasing rendition (the crowd being Grant and Dan; in fact, if you look at the pictures of us singing, everyone in the background looks not just annoyed, but angry), this couple came in. The girl of the couple was cheering incredibly loud for us. I actually wonder if they heard us from the outside and walked in because honestly, it was dead when we got there, and when I sat down, it was crowded. Or maybe I was hallucinating.

Anyway, this couple comes in, and when I'm done, I walk by them, and the girl starts telling me what a great performance I just did, it was fantastic, etc. I met her and her boyfriend, who were Hungarian. And in a little beautiful twist of fate, what was I wearing? That's right, look at the pictures. My "I am Hungary for Turkey" t-shirt my sister gave me for Christmas 2004. Like I've been saying, I'm worldwide, bitch. That was a hit with them. They were nice people, those Hungarians. They were pretty affectionate also. In a very, very inappropriate way. But hey. When in Rome, you know?

that made no sense.

two)
Eric: (to girl at bar): what's your name?
girl: Danielle.
Eric: What brings you here?
Danielle: my boyfriend (who was singing a SInatra tune) is from here.
Eric: Where are you from (noting lack of accent)?
Danielle: New Jersey.
Eric: Wow...exotic.

We met this girl Danielle who was sitting in this bar with her boyfriend who ran a bar around the corner. And you want to know how old this girl was? Here's a hint: in Texas, she's 11 years past the age of consent, but she's still two years too young to vote.

quick aside: South Dakota. Mississippi. what up with that?

Okay, so this 19 year old girl, someone born in 1987, has a boyfriend who runs a bar (i might actually be making that part up) in London. God, why did I wait so long to see the world? Why? Why? There's so much to see out there and so many people with stories, that I think that I won't have time to meet them all and hear their stories, and it stresses me out.

three) While singing "Champagne Supernova", this party of girls comes in. It was the birthday of one of them (pictured way, way below), and...well, there's not much more to say. I just do recall going down on my knees to sing to her and singing Oasis like the lyrics actually pieced together some sort of message.

four) karma is a bitch.

i don't even know how long we were there, but truth be told, it wasn't that long. after the Oasis song, i sat down next to the Hungarians, who were seriously just the width of the seven centimeters of the thickness of their clothes away from having coitus two feet away from me. that's a bit alarming in a public place.

so i go in the corner and put my head down. and i'm passed out. i suck.

five minutes later we're in a cab.

five minutes and fifteen seconds later, i'm opening the door and vomiting fish, chips, squid, crab, a muffin top, and the missing four button of our remote control. ugly. nasty. i apologize to grant, dan, the city of london's street sweepers, my parents, therapist, family, and you, dear readers. i don't think i've done that in three years. i'm a bit too old for that.

but i don't apologize to our cab driver.

Eric: Bleahahahhghghghahghgh
Cabbie: Get out.
Grant: (to me) Are you done?
Eric: Um. Sure?
Grant: Well, he's out of puke. You can keep going.
Cabbie: ...
(cab pulls over)

oops. screw that guy. what, there's no drunks in London? you guys have never had too much to drink and lived to regret it minutes later? i just wanted to get home, a-hole. now i wish i hadn't opened the door. dude. that guy said two words to us. i don't even think he had time to say "Where ya blokes headed? Back to the flat is it, Govna'?" stupid podunk town.

eventually, i straightened up enough to get into a cab and get home. Despite Grant's best attempts to straddle me and get my contact lenses out, I unfortunately slept in my contacts for five hours after that. Surprisingly, the hangover was tame, nothing that a doner and two hours of the top 25 Punk'd moments couldn't take care of.

for some reason, i'm just as bothered by sleeping with the contacts as i am with what a hopeless, hapless alcoholic i am. wow.

and to you underaged kids reading this (david, alex): don't be like me. it's a long, hard road back to respectability.

i go out on friday night and i get home on saturday morning

2006-02-28T19:17:00.000+07:00

dear readers,

if you scroll back maybe a month or so ago - earlier in the life of the prague blague - you may recall a particularly woeful emo entry about missing the finer points of intelligent conversation here in prague. i missed communication. i missed talking to people. i was making friends on the internet, for god's sakes.

after pondering the epic night that was friday in london, i've come to several conclusions. one, it's not intelligent conversation i missed, because 95% of the conversations i had in london were nowhere near the vicinity of intelligent. in fact, i apologize to all the people i met on friday night whose names i continued to get wrong, whose hometowns i confused, and who had to repeatedly explain to me where you were from and what not. it's not that i was ignoring you. it's just that i'm a total dick.

two, i read someplace that one of the best parts of traveling is meeting new people. it's not very easy in prague because of the language barrier. in London i got more of a glimpse into the joys of expatriate life and breaking down cultural barriers. look at where the people were from that we just randomly ended up partying with were from: new zealand, south africa, brazil, i don't know. it was quite exhilarating, actually. i'm worldwide, baby. world freaking wide.

so grant and dan made sure i hit the ground running once i got to london, giving me frothy beverages to drink on the london underground. that was the authentic british experience #1: drinking on the tube.

quick aside: i realize it's kind of tacky to write about drunken exploits in foreign countries, because i might come across looking like an ugly american frat boy. but...well, hey. what are you going to do. at least i'm cognizant of the fact.

we met up with a whole crew of miami ad "school" folks - some might call them "students" - at some bar that was supposed to have karaoke. unfortunately, the machine was broken, so we moved to some sort of club that seemed to be part deli to me. i don't even have any idea where the hell we were. i actually don't think anyone told me because come to think of it, i don't know who knew where the hell we were. i do remember buying a fifth of vodka with grant and splitting that, ghetto style, out of my jacket pocket. as if that wasn't enough, we followed that up with a fifth of whiskey. after that, we followed up with cool ranch doritos which were so freaking delicious it's ridiculous, and some wafers and what not.

if any of you regular readers remembers the epic interactive blog trivia challenge of a few months ago, you may recall that grant here was the winner of the pop culture reference game. his first place prize was a furry russian hat. i have to give grant props because he pretty much did not take the hat off all weekend (and sent me an ichat message earlier that said "i'm still wearing the hat") while i sported the cabana boy hat that is about as out of place in london as an orthodontist's office. hiyo!!!

sorry. some way, somehow, i remember walking next to a very tall south african guy after leaving the deli bar whose and having this discussion:

Eric: You're South African?
W: Yes.
Eric: Have you ever killed a giraffe?
W: Giraffe? No, they live out in the plains. I live in Johannesberg.
Eric: Wow, so you kill them with your bare hands, then.
W: Yes.

you know, for the rest of the night, i couldn't ever get this guy's name right, i just went around telling people he killed giraffes with his bare hands. apparently, his technique was to rush them, jump up and bear hug their necks until they choked to death and toppled over with an enormous crash. talk about savages.

see, it's not intelligent conversation that i missed. i missed being an ass and having people wonder what the hell is wrong with me. and it's not like i'm alone in this. grant asked some australian guy if he was from Walkabout Creek. my god, we are obnoxious.

so we ended up at some party at some flat in god knows where. there were six of us i think. Dan and Grant might have to fill in the blanks, because it's all a little hazy from here. the one thing i can recall with clarity, however, was sitting on the couch when this guy comes in wearing a full cowboy outfit and picking up the acoustic guitar to entertain the party with song and dance, minus the dance. they turned the music down, and everyone stared as he proceeded to play a song about how much he loved titties.

i mentioned this earlier, because he was perhaps my favorite character of the weekend. the guy comes in, dressed like john wayne, and immediately starts singing covers of punk rock. i remember singing along to "american music" and "please don't go" by the violent femmes with him, and telling him that rancid sang about the rich subdivision in my hometown in "salvation". we actually have a video of the man singing "another story about a dead american" or something like that, which is absolutely amazing. the people you meet out there in the world - jeez. that's all i can say. geez.

we were at this party until around four or five AM, singing and playing guitar and then playing oasis songs on some guy's computer.

we stumbled out for authentic london experience #2: taking a double decker bus home. i tried in vain to get everyone to sing "Hey Jude" but once again, could only succeed in getting Grant to sing along with me. How can you resist singing "Hey Jude" ? That's like not joining in to sing "Build Me Up Buttercup" when someone is singing that (more on that theory later). what did i say i missed? oh yeah. being a complete and total horse's ass.

oh shit, i was right. more details are coming to light. we ate at some turkish doner restaurant at five in the morning, during which we had a lengthy and animated discussion with some "blokes" about the deliciousness of "burger sauce." either way, it was spicy, it was delicious, and it gave me the fuel to stumble home and somehow climb into a rickety bunkbed to pass out for five or six hours. mmm...doner.

so that's really it, as far as friday night. but before i sign off, and let other details come to light, either via dan, grant, or any other MAS blokes, we should examine the aforementioned 30 hours of debauchery i mentioned yesterday.

ok. i touched down in london at 20:00 and took off at 21:00. that's 49 hours.
subtract a total of nine hours of sleep (not the previously predicted 16 for the weekend), that leaves 40 hours.
of those 40 hours, two were spent in transit, one was spent sprinting through heathrow. that leaves 37 hours.
now of those 37 hours, and this is what i was really trying to get at, i spent maybe 11pm to 5am drunk on friday night/saturday morning. then i spent about 11 to two AM drunk on saturday night/sunday morning. that makes nine of 37 waking hours in london spent in a state of inebriation, or 24%.

basically, i spent a quarter of my awake time in London drunk as a skunk (with Grant). okay, that's all. that's kind of astounding, actually.

coming later: saturday night.

(pictured: new zealand cowboy wearing my cabana boy hat)

leave me alone for the next three days

2006-02-27T15:37:00.000+07:00

i was thinking this last week before i flew to london: my plane was to touch down at 20:05 Friday London time. My flight back to Prague on Sunday was scheduled to take off at 21:05. If you subtract travel time and airport time, then you subtract the average eight hours sleep for two nights, that left about 30 hours of party time.

with London being about what...ten times the size of Prague (i don't think that's really that much of an exaggeration) i didn't really expect to see the sights. this trip was solely for hanging out with my two friends whom i may not see for awhile, the previously spotlighted Grant and Dan.

so. did i see London Bridge? No. Did I see Buckingham Palace? No. hugh grant? no. Big Ben? from far, far away, yes. i did, however, get to go to a house party with some south african giraffe killers, watch a new zealand cowboy sing some punk covers with an acoustic guitar (the first song was about "titties" and the second one was something like "girls hate me" which was just so, so entertaining), meet an overly affectionate hungarian couple who really liked karaoke, revert to adolescent idiocy with hidden fifths of liquor in jacket pockets, and accomplish my two goals of eating fish & chips and singing "love hurts."

i really can't possibly describe the goings-on that well right now, and i'm certain that as my brain recovers from the bizarre debauchery that was my 48 hours in london, better details will come to light.

nonetheless, a picture is indeed worth a thousand words, so what i'll do rather than going in depth (for now) is i'll post my ten favorite pictures from the weekend below, in chronological order, and i'll let you, dear readers, try to piece it together from there. but i assure you, full recollections of the weekend's events are forthcoming.

this post is worth 5,000 words

2006-02-27T15:34:00.000+07:00

this post is worth 5,000 more words

2006-02-27T15:29:00.000+07:00

the plot thickens

2006-02-24T19:05:00.000+07:00

sorry i've been neglecting the prague blog, everybody. i am a bit busy here. but here's another email i got that i'll share with y'all. remember, don't tell renetta.

Samanphand, Piyanuj (BKK-ME)
to me, Mark, Martin, Piyanuch
More options 5:39 am (7 hours ago)
Dear Eric,

My name is Piyanuj (Ann) Samanphand, HR Manager for McCann Worldgroup Thailand. I have received your e-mail forwarded by Mr. Mark Ingrouille my President & CEO.

We are interested in you to work for free as an internship with us. However, please e-mail me your resume, portfolio and certificate of education also advise me your period for starting an internship here.

If you have any questions please contact me via e-mail or telephone number. 662-287-1000 ext: 151.

Best Regards,
Ann

my flight to the land of the spice girls is in seven hours. postcards go out next week.

pondering Jakarta

2006-02-23T16:57:00.000+07:00

this is not about me.

For Erick, a student in Jakarta, and other hundreds of young people, Osama is an object of both curiosity and pride. “I want to know who he really is; he is exceptional because he fights the superpower America,” said Erick. Erick went to an Internet kiosk and typed the words “Osama bin Laden” in the Yahoo and Google search engines. He found more than 30 links on this Saudi Arabian businessman who lives in Afghanistan.
(from worldpress.org)

more later. busy. here's a picture of jakarta though. i'm jinxing my chances as i speak.

105 rejected tea names

2006-02-22T22:37:00.000+07:00

for the energy tea:
Face the Day Fiercely
Wake Up Call
Morning Mood Maker
Rushing River
Herbal Preparation
Motivational Drinker
Pre-Party Tea
Morning Cheers
Have a Nice Day
Smile first
Good Day, Sunshine
Essence
MoTeaVate
Awakening
Power Up
Fierce
Motivation
Ready to Rock
Early Bird Song
Morning Mist
Energetic Encounter
Dandelion Mist
Splash of the Morning
Morning Scream

-for the digestive tea:

Body Balance
Herbal Balance
Herbal Refreshment
The Stomach Soother
A Good Meal’s Best Friend
Soothe the System
Satisfaction to the Soul
Heaven’s Harmony
Slumbering Stomach
Afternoon Delight
Belly Blessing
Harmonious Herbs
System Soothing
No More Grumbling
Soft Spring Stream
Sack Satisfaction
The Apothecary
Recovery Tea
Thoughtful Pondering
unction First
Gluttony’s Remedy
Got Satisfaction
Blissfully Satisfied
TeaLicious
ComfortingPower
MaintenanceMaintain
Rejuvenation
Quality Control
Quality Assurance
Balance of the Elements
System Boost
Springwater Slick
Natural Nurturing
Soothing Steamer

-for the relaxing tea:

The Daily Decompresser
Stress Liberator
The Liberator
Placid Lake
Natural Meditation
Tea Therapy
The Day’s Detox
Nightly Nirvana
Daily Enlightenment
Rest Assured
Lounge Act
Numb the senses
TeaLaxing
Relaxing
Power Down
Chill
Restoration
After Party
After Hours Herbs
Dusk ‘s Blanket
Prelude to Slumber
Constellation Dreams
Sleep’s Secrets
Midnight Magic
Natural Decompression
Leisure of the Leaves
Reset the Rest
Nature’s Time Out
Maximum Relaxing
Contentment in a Cup
Warm Cup of Chill Out
The Body’s Blanket
Rest Harder
Only in Dreams
Spooning by spoonful

i will now go jab a lamp into my eye.

i'm proud to be an [ugly] american

2006-02-22T16:42:00.000+07:00

so i promised my mom i wouldn't ignite any international incidents when i got here. good thing they didn't publish my name underneath those cartoons i drew for that danish newspaper.

hm. i wonder if that's a joke i really should have made. oh well. my computer has no backspace button.

as we all know, even without the lovely michelle kwan, the show must go on in the marquee event of the winter olympics, women's figure skating. now, for all you sports fans back in the states that want to live the life of a babbling expatriate, i must warn you. being deprived of the nba, ncaa basketball, college football, and of course, major league baseball will take something out of you. it leads you to do heretofore inexplicable things, like going to bars in "I Heart USA" T-shirts and being obnoxious for team USA, even if Team USA is a bunch of adolescent girls on ice skates.

in an odd twist of fate, i went with jenn to a bar i discovered last weekend with several things it has going for it: flatscreen plasmas, english speaking (dutch) bartenders, wifi, good hot wings, and cheap staropramen beer. unfortunately, the olympics over there were pre-empted for the european cup, which is some sort of soccer tournament. i guess it's because these czechs and the danish don't really have ice skaters, so they didn't care if it was on or not. me, like i said, i just wanted to yell at the tv, get my guy out. and i couldn't really do that watching f^cking soccer. don't get me wrong, i like soccer. i played soccer for some 13 years of my life. and someday, i hope to be the kind of parent that unleashes torrents of obscenities at my child for any shortcomings he might have on the field. but that's besides the point. we had to choose between sitting at a bar and drinking and eating bar food (don't underestimate the absence of bar food from your life either - chili fries, buffalo wings, quesadillas, japapeño poppers (i'm telling you this so you don't take it for granted) - or sitting at another bar without wifi and wings, but with ice skating. yes, i assure you, i am a man. and yes, i did want to watch the little girls skate around. am i a pervert? no. i just want to get the sports fan out. sorry i'm so defensive. hm.

anyway, any quandaries we may have had with the cost/benefit analyses over wifi and wings versus beer and ice skating were solved when jenn's battery died. so we went to another bar. we did notice they had karaoke (always a huge, huge bonus) and a club, but they were showing the same stupid soccer game. so we went on. and on. and on. and where did we end up?

(drumroll please...)

TGI f*cking Friday's (TGIFF). Again. Yes, the overpriced american hellhole with street signs indoors and alligators with sunglasses adorning the walls.

[quick aside: if Marge has any better Simpsons lines than "Street signs? Indoors? Whatever. An alligator with sunglasses? Now I've seen everything" I'd like to know about it. I realize this is highly debatable, but that's good because I'm sitting here writing about girls on ice skates for god's sakes]

dude, it was the only place with the olympics on. these euros really do love their soccer. we had to go to an american blight on the culture to watch the olympics. and may i reiterate, it's the marquee event of the olympics.

anyway, we got in and they cut to the USA/Russia hockey game. Five minutes after they started it, we scored. Jenn and I cheered. Five minutes later, Russia scored. This guy in front of us cheered. It was on.

They cut away to go back to figure skating, where Russian favorite Irina Slutskaya had the lead. We watched several girls (some of which look freaksihly young) skate and skate well (Dear Korean Skater: it's okay to smile. I don't think Kim Jong Il is going to torch your house if you do. oh wait. maybe he might. am i going to ignite an international incident with this blog post or what). some fell. but whatever. we basically were waiting for our girl sasha cohen to finish off the night.

so i made it a point to clap and cheer every time she landed a jump. i also made it a point to floss my shirt when i took my jacket off. i also paid like $6 for onion rings (TGIFF bastards). i was obnoxious - jenn's a classy sports watcher (and it's f*cking ice skating) - well, not that obnoxious. i wasn't that liquored up, and there weren't enough americans in there to start a "USA! USA!" chant, but i made it known who we were going for (for those that couldn't see my shirt). although by the time it ended, it was just us and the russian dude and his family by the time it ended. it ended with our girl in first by a narrow .03 margin, which was greeted by our applause. that's right. america. F yeah.

so the russian dude gets dressed, he was middle aged, but he looked like he was with his mom and dad - classy guy taking his parents to TGIFF, by the way - and he walks by. and i know he's heard my cheering so i expect some kind of dirty look. but when he passes by, he says something in russian to me and keeps going. i'm going to assume he said something not terribly flattering, for which he can kiss my ass, because second place is the first loser, according to my favorite No Fear shirt. but whatever. i would have loved to get in a barroom brawl over women's figure skating. that would be a story to tell. and watching the olympics in a foreign country? it's kind of cool. i recommend it. but dude. prague has not seen a fraction of my sports and alcohol fueled obnoxiousness, and i'm not sure that it will. i don't want to get too drunk over women's figure skating and start making inappropriate remarks about girls that turn out to be 14. jeeez. my parents must be so proud of me. but the point is, that russian guy had a real stick up his ass. hey, they won hockey. come on. i can't help it that he's an enemy of freedom. i really hate enemies of freedom. what kind of enemy of freedom takes their parents to TGIFF? what a wuss. maybe i will get more belligerent here. it's been awhile.

thanks to my cousin glenn for buying me the $4 I heart USA shirt from super K back in christmas 01. that shirt has gotten some serious usage.

in other news, i got this email today. don't tell Renetta, any of you Ad School dicks. I'm on my own from now on.

Dear Eric,

Would you consider starting off your carreer with McCann in Indonesia (Jakarta)?
If so, let me know and we will talk further.

Best regards,
Jan Gerits | CEO & Senior Technical Advisor
McCann Worldgroup Indonesia

now, if someone can tell me what the hell i'm getting myself into, i would appreciate it. hugs and kisses everyone, xoxoxxoxoxo
eric.

Ice To See You

2006-02-21T15:45:00.000+07:00

i've finally gotten a chance to cement my legacy in this world and i'm falling short here.

when i was taking rhetoric 103b in college, i had to write a short paper on Hobbes. the subject matter was dry and difficult (it actually got much, much worse), and my TA was telling us how to format our papers properly. the last thing she described was the title page, after which she said, "this class isn't really going to be the most fun class you have here. so hey, at least have fun with the title of your paper." she was right about the class, so i decided to have fun with the title. playing off everyone's favorite way to tell off their boss, i named it "Take this Hobbes and Shove It".

i got the paper back with huge red writing on the title page that read "INAPPROPRIATE! your title should properly convey your thoughts and work."

hey, i was just following what she told us to do. but she also told us not to write thesis sentences, she said to write thesis paragraphs, so that should let you know how smart she was. besides, how smart can anyone be that studies rhetoric? wow, you have a master's in rhetoric. congratulations. that's about as useful as dual bachelor's degrees in english and rhetoric. have fun working at hot topic, you hipster pseudo intellectual. maybe you'll get that job at Peet's one day. oops.

i remember i knew where my paper was when people went up to collect their shit. she just put a stack of like 40 papers on the front desk. i eased my way up there to avoid the rush, but i could hear people snickering one by one, kind of in a circle. and yes, their snickering was following my paper. hey, i liked the title.

over the years, i have enjoyed putting my skills at snappy title to the test: i had to write a paper on a california proposition of my choice back in 1998, so i chose this weird proposition that outlawed selling horsemeat for human consumption. i don't know where the hell people eat horse (outside of the czech republic, apparently), but i had a field day with naming that paper:

My Lunch, Flicka
The Belmont Steaks
They Eat Horses, Don't They?
The Blackened Stallion
I'll have the Horse, hold the Radish
Oscar Meyer announces new Soylent Green Hot Dogs

my list of potential titles was like 15 long, ask my sister. she remembers. i think i went with "My Lunch, Flicka". Mmmm...Flicka. for the record, i just came up with that last one. and this was a real prop, i remember because it was the first time i voted.

years later, when I was working for the Oakland A's, i had the opportunity to write postgame summaries for the media. I had snappy titles for those facts also. When Bengie Molina and Benji Gil of the Angels lit up the A's for most of the runs in an Oakland defeat, I put "Who Let the Dogs Out?" (in honor of them both being named like the little dog, for those of my slower readers). When Aaron Sele shut the A's out over eight innings, I put "I Sele Dead People." When it was discovered that Jason Giambi hit better with his little brother Jeremy in the lineup, we put "Mini-G, You Complete Me." when the A's lit up Royals pitcher Chad Durbin for the third straight game, we put "Dis-Durbin Behavior." and of course, there was my favorite, when Miguel Tejada botched a groundball to end a career best errorless streak, he had a line written titled "Pobody's Nerfect."

Keep in mind this went on for two seasons. Both seasons ended with postseason berths. Coincidence? I think not.

why the hell am i telling you all of this? because i had one assignment yesterday, and i'm still bashing my head over it: to name three Teas from some Amsterdam based tea company. my creative director even said to me, "Think about how many tea bags you could be responsible for" which was a bit disturbing. but anyway, after "Afternoon Tea-Light" (which was like the second one I came up with), I've drawn a complete blank. So now there's a bunch of clichéd named for teas that i'm responsible for, like "natural meditation" for the relaxing tea. it's not that it won't sell, i just want to be able to brag about naming some stupid teas. this is bragging rights, dammit. how many people do you know that have named Amsterdam teas? yeah, that's what i thought. this name could potentially outlive me. so it's pissing me off that i'm drawing a blank here.

better liquor up and go back to work. Go Sasha Cohen. Poor Michelle Kwan. Go Sasha Cohen.

only in dreams

2006-02-20T15:43:00.000+07:00

so i had this dream last night/this morning. if anyone can tell me what it means, i'll give you mad props.

i was living in some dingy-ass harlem or brooklyn apartment. for some reason, my odd upstairs neighbor was bothering me with his constant pounding, stomping, scratching on the floor, whatever. so i stalk up there with a little knife in my hands to, well, i guess to kill him, i dunno. i'd like to think that here in reality that i'd address an altercation with reasoned and civil argument before whipping out a shank to stick in someone's side.

so i walk up and i peek in the guy's keyhole and i see this trashy dude with long hair in a wifebeater walking around with a huge butcher knife. armed with only my butter knife, i decide not to confront him, although he sees me in the keyhole and freaks me out by lunging at me.

i wait a few hours and go back armed not only with my shank, but with a metal baton, or a broomstick maybe. so this time i peek in the keyhole and see him frying up some ham or bacon or bagel bites (because only trashy people eat bagel bites), so i ram shoulder first into the door, which opens, but not all the way because the security chain is linked to the door. so it's opened like four inches and he turns after me with his knife. i back up and stick my broomstick/baton through the door and knock the knife out of his hand. when the knife drops, i notice his body is still in the same holding knife/stabbing position and that he's being propped up through the living room. basically, the dude is a puppet.

so i beat on the dude more with the stick until i knock him over - i think his arm fell off or something.

anyway, i get in the apartment and follow the cables and the puppeteering system through the living room and the control panel. but when i look at who's been manning the puppet, it's a cat. not even a fully grown cat, a kitten. it's in a little black helmet behind the controls and it's tied down in a harness so it can't get away. i have a knife in one hand and the baton in the other. i know i have to kill it, so i start beating it. i hit him in the head twice, it was a bit woozy but still alive. then i get ready for the deathblow, and all of a sudden i hear my alarm. 7:30. time to wake up.

i woke up kind of relieved that i didn't have to kill a cat in my dream, but that's what happened. if someone can now prescribe me some anti depressants, that would be cool.

the freaks of the industry

2006-02-20T15:40:00.000+07:00

so much for my plans of intellectual growth and stimulation this weekend.

today i fully intended on enriching my mind with a museum that came highly recommended to me by an old man back home that came to prague last summer: the museum of communism.

given my communist berkeley roots, i do have an interest in this period of history, specifically from the perspective of these fine czech people. apparently, the museum is a bit kitschy (the tragically ludicrous, the ludicrously tragic - like when a clown dies), but i don't mind. i like to learn. i'll be honest. learning really is pretty fun. those commercials were right.

and while we're on the topic of commercials we used to see as little kids (actually, we're not), i'd like to share this quote with you all, because hopefully, someone out there can cite it for me properly:

"humphrey, i apologize for poking you in the nose."

anyone? anyone? i seem to recall muppet-like puppets (muppet: not quite a mop, not quite a puppet, but man...) and a universal message of tolerance and forgiveness because humphrey pokes this dude in the nose then has to apologize for it. oddly, they were played during commercial breaks from cartoons like GI Joe and Beverly Hills Teens. Oh yes. I remember Beverly Hills Teens. Let's not forget, the cartoon preceded 90210 by at least a year. I remember those. Now does anyone remember this public service commercial I'm talking about? Anyone? Anyone? You remember the name of the town, don't you?

Not that I'm expecting anyone to get these, but aside from the mystery quote, I've already made reference to two movies and two simpsons episodes. i can't stop.

so yeah. i tried to go to the museum of communism today. but as i was saying earlier, my mental growth and stimulation not only fell short, they probably went backwards.

in short, i couldn't remember where the stupid museum was. but it was nice today - holy crap, prague seems like a totally different city when the sun is out. lots of tourists, and the vagrants are parked on park benches and what not. it's not that i find that terribly appealing, i feel for homeless people - but where the hell do they sleep when it's -20 in the middle of the night? the human body is a resilient beast.

i couldn't find the museum of communism, but i did find the museum of sex machines. yes, this is a real place. in fact, it's four floors. they have kind of an open entrance, and there's a gold statue with a rotating wheel of feathers spinning between its legs. it's not graphic - well, not as graphic as what i imagine is like inside, no pun intended. but i did notice the entrance is disturbingly appealing to children. i watched this kid pull his dad in there - the kid couldn't have been more than five or six. the dad wanted to pull the kid out, but the kid wanted to stay and stare at the tickle machine. and who knows what kind of profound influence that's going to have on the kid? what the hell is he going to invent when he grows up? ideally, he'll invent a self-warming porcelain toilet seat so it doesn't hurt when you sit down to do your business in the middle of the night, but it's probably more likely that he invents something along the lines of what the psycho guy makes the sex shop worker make in "se7en." and y'all know what i be talking about.

so i decided, f^ck it. i wanted to go to a museum today, i'll go to this. only thing was, i only had 200 crowns on me and they wanted 250 for admission. it's 150 for a student, but my seven year old college ID didn't work. they want an ISIC ID card, which I don't have because Miami Ad "School" isn't legit enough to have .edu addresses.

oh yes, speaking of my "school" here's a link to the people that get 90% of my tuition:

www.myspace.com/ronandpippa

yes, they live on a sprawling ranch with their adopted romanian daughter. they have like nine horses, but they can't give us health insurance, a .edu email address, or tell us where our next quarter will be more than 11 days before you're supposed to leave. i don't want to call them incompetent, because that would be unfair. i won't call them anything, in fact. i just want you all to think about that. but why complain? without them, i wouldn't be in prague right now.

anyway, i decided "screw it, 250 crowns can buy me 10 half liters of beer here." yeah, i'd be lying if this was the first time i was weighing on one hand entrance to a sex machine museum and five liters of beer in one sitting on the other hand, but i decided to just bounce. there's still plenty of time to go there. maybe if i find myself a hot czech date i'll take here there. it'll be like that scene in "taxi driver" where deniro takes cybill shepherd to an adult movie. i'll be like, "what? what's wrong? did i do something wrong? it's just a museum, museums are nice." then she'll freak out, i'll get a mohawk, and then i'll try to assassinate whoever's running for president in 2008 - chuck hagel or john edwards or something (but not my boy Kucinich, aka D-Koose).

so eventually i went to see Memoirs of a Geisha, which was average, at best. I didn't go in with high expectations, because I just finished the book, and I found the book to be very emotionally taxing. In fairness to the movie, to do a fully faithful adaptation would have required four or five hours probably, and while they'll do that for The ChronicWHATles of Narnia or Lord of the Rings, my guess is that an american studio won't do that for a movie with a cast of all asians. even if they stuck a white man character in it that wasn't in the book. but i digress.

so here, dear friends, is what i'll leave you with: the long list of movies that are actually better than the book, not the other way around, which would be far too lengthy to list:

Field Of Dreams (better than "Shoeless Joe" by WP Kinsella)
The Little Mermaid (the kids book is actually a bit disturbing)
Goodfellas (although the book "Wiseguy" by Nicholas Pileggi is still pretty dope)
O (Shakespeare is overrated. Julia Stiles and Josh Hartnett in a modern day adaptation of one of his more disturbing tragedies, nice. real nice, you morons)

am i getting pretentious here? probably. damn. i just can't stop. any other submissions i would be happy to read.

okay, one last thing: i found in my backpack about nine postcards i bought in Nebraska and Iowa, all of which are incredibly, incredibly lame. If you want one in addition to a pretty Prague postcard, post your address here or email me. one of you will be lucky enough to get one of a 30 foot cow.

oh wait, no. the 30 foot cow has already been filled out. one of you will get something equally lame. you know what the midwest is? young and restless.

today's featured reader can't read

2006-02-17T18:38:00.000+07:00

but hey. nobody bothers reading any more. if i get one more message from one of you illiterate sons of bitches about these entries being too long, i'm just going to go into hiding and keep posting lyrics to bad '70's songs.

anyway, i'm just posting this because baby here is wearing the "onesie" that my ex-girlfriend and i bought for her at a whale's vagina costco while she was still a fetus.

i think my brother wanted to name his band "feed us a fetus." disturbing. catchy, but disturbing.

oh yeah, mom if you're reading this, you're going to be a grandmother to a few czech babies when september rolls around. sorry. but health care here is very, very comprehensive.

i'm officially a lame adult. i'm posting baby pictures on my blog. maybe i'll just go to eddie bauer now. oh wait, there's no eddie bauer in prague.

Name: Bijou Belle Mason
height: 79 cm
weight: 12 kg

favorite food: mother's milk, cereal, rubber ducks, stuffed caterpillars, her own hands, other people's faces when they get too close, beef tartare
hobbies: speaking in gibberish, thrashing around like an inverted turtle, being cute, being fawned over, being spoiled, being held, falling asleep in the car, keeping mom and dad awake, having a big head, trying to communicate, lying prone, sitting up.

favorite books: Nitezche, Plato, Kant, Marx, "everybody poops", love in the time of cholera
favorite movies: Platoon, Full Metal Jacket, Hamburger Hill, Casualties of War
favorite music: "put it in your mouth" (akinyele), "baby baby" (amy grant), "baby got back" (sir-mix-a-lot), "milkshake" (kelis),
favorite tv: The O'Reilley Factor

status: single, but haplessly lost in unrequited love
drinks: mothers milk
smokes: fools
drugs: prenatal pills

pet peeves: people that don't walk around when holding her, marsha chandy, dark rooms, giordano' pizza on the south side, lactose
turn-ons: caterpillars, light bulbs, ducks, onesies, baby guess?, baby vietnamese farmer hats, being sung to, peek-a-boo
turn-offs: injections, not having teeth, rashes, lame people that call her "dude" and tell her to stop speaking in gibberish, walking, crawling, running

favorite commercials:

"pull ups" circa 1994, even though she was -10 years old at the time:

I'm a big kid, look what I can do
I can wear big kid's pants too
And I can pull them off and on
Mommy, wow!
I'm a big kid now.

too busy to blog

2006-02-17T17:18:00.000+07:00

so, here's a picture of a Vienna metro stop and the lyrics to Nazareth's "Love Hurts", which are so painfully bad, yet so excruciatingly good.

you know, when i worked at a video store a few years ago - actually, many years ago - we created a "painfully bad (but excruciatingly good)" section. i don't remember what was on it, except for maybe leprechaun 4 ('lep in the hood' and i'm not making this up, Ice-T was in it as "Mack Daddy Onassis") and "Little Miss Millions" starring the guy from Head of the Class and a precocious Jennifer Love Hewitt, before superstardom. Ahem. Stardom. Er...whatever.

More later. I'm working on Diet Pepsi, or as the call it here, "Pepsi Lite." Euros are so weird.

oh yeah, one more thing. this has supplanted whatever i previously promised would be my next karaoke song. the lyrics are that good:

Love hurts, love scars,
Love wounds, and marks,
Any heart, not tough,
Or strong, enough
To take a lot of pain,
Take a lot of pain
Love is like a cloud
Holds a lot of rain
Love hurts, ooh ooh love hurts

I’m young, I know,
But even so
I know a thing, or two
I learned, from you
I really learned a lot,
Really learned a lot
Love is like a flame
It burns you when it’s hot
Love hurts, ooh ooh love hurts

Some fools think of happiness
Blissfulness, togetherness
Some fools fool themselves I guess
They’re not foolin’ me

I know it isn’t true,
I know it isn’t true
Love is just a lie,
Made to make you blue
Love hurts, ooh,ooh love hurts
Ooh,ooh love hurts

[guitar solo]

I know it isn’t true,
I know it isn’t true
Love is just a lie,
Made to make you blue
Love hurts, ooh ooh love hurts
Ooh ooh love hurts
Ooh ooh...

touch me, i'm sick

2006-02-16T20:13:00.000+07:00

[rated pg-13]

my cousins will probably bring it up in the comments section, so i'll take a pre-emptive strike and just post these meandering thoughts:

a few years ago i was in vegas with all of my cousins, fucking trashed at some casino. we were sitting at a bar drinking fuzzy navels (my cousin ryan bought them all) when i started watching a hooker across the bar. it was my first time ever really watching one in action, and i watched as she'd take a few sips from her drink, go play a slot machine for a bit, then go back to the bar, always keeping an empty seat next to her. i know prostitution isn't legal in vegas, just outside of vegas, but the bartender didn't care. i don't know what it was, i was so fascinated by her. that's when i formulated my curiosity over what a hooker would charge if you just wanted to spoon.

i brought this up to my cousins - glenn remembers this because he still brings it up - what would the going rate for that be? would it be sleazy? it would violate the entire premise of that unbearable lightness passage about men wanting to have sex with an infinite amount of women, but they only want to sleep next to one. I've actually thought about this extensively, i even have tried unsuccessfully to make it into a short story twice. the "hooker with a heart of gold" character is played out, but the "john with a heart of gold" story never has been touched. well, "Vertigo" kind of did. not really though. It's similar. i think both times the story revolved around a guy who had just lost his love, and was looking to find that familiarity again. so he had her dress up in a pair of ratty old sweat pants and a randall cunningham football jersey.

it's still an interesting concept. look at the dichotomy of the characters. one is someone who denies any form of intimacy whatsoever and is probably unfamiliar and uncomfortable with it on many levels. i get the impression a hooker would rather suck a guy off and then bounce rather than cuddle with some creepy guy for four hours. it's time management. money talks though, and if a guy had the means to make her stay, she would. and the guy of course is the opposite; he's numb not to intimacy, but to sex. he doesn't want sex with anyone but his lost love, he just wants to feel again. see? interesting.

did she say "making f*ck"?

2006-02-16T19:47:00.000+07:00

[Rated R - sorry mom and dad]

so for those of you privileged enough to get spastic, beer-influenced IMs or emails from me last night regarding a prostitute, i guess i have some explaining to do.

so my workload here at BBBDO coupled with class has gotten a bit overwhelming. after work yesterday, i decided to be a true eurotrash wannabe and go do some working at a cafe. i just got off the metro in the center of town (The Muzeum stop) and walked down Wenceslaus Square and hung a left. I'm telling you this to paint the picture that I was in the middle of town, specifically tourist ville.

And I'm walking the same way I always do, wide eyed, bushy tailed, slightly belligerent, looking at pretty buildings, and listening to my Hadrian's Wall iPod mini. I was right by the Adidas store (home of my $46 "I Adidas Prague" shirt. yes, forty-six) when this little thing walks up to me, unassumingly. I made brief eye contact with her and smiled - the courteous thing to do, I'm no ugly American, dammit - and she made a beeline to come talk to me. I assumed she wanted a light, because she was holding a cigarette. But I quit. While back.

"Do you speak English?" she asked, innocently. She had no trace of an accent, actually. At least not in these five syllables. I smiled. Conversation is pretty huge to me these days, particularly the English variety. Czech people sometimes tend to just spout off a whole bunch of stuff once in awhile, assuming you know what they're saying. Usually I just say "ok" and then walk off. Jen and I did it to the guy at the Chinese restaurant the other day.

"Yes."

"Do you want blowjob? Sex?"

Woah.

I think I had already started running for the hills before she raised the tonality of the final syllable of "sex" to indicate an interrogative sentence.

"No. Thank you though."

It's funny how you can retain your politeness in the face of a particularly jarring question. I mean, I've seen plenty of prostitutes before. Hell, one of my favorite things to do back in San Francisco was to drive up Larkin Street at night and play the "man or woman" guessing game with the nightly freakshow they have over there. So I gave her another smile and walked off.

I arrived at a coffee shop and ordered a beer, to calm my nerves after a long day. They told me they were closing early, so I downed it immediately and ordered another. Rinse, lather, repeat. What do you want from me, they're like seventy cents. Damn.

And no, damnit. I never considered her offer, thank you very much.

I did, however, have to walk by her again on my way back home. I saw her from like a block away, stopping every single guy that walked by. It was kind of a sad sight. Yes, it's the world's oldest profession and all, but that doesn't make it right. There's all sorts of anthropological claims and conclusions that could be drawn from the history of prostitution. But we're not going to go into that quite yet. Instead, we'll go to exchange #2.

I kind of slowed down to watch her in action as I walked by, because she stopped some dude walking home with a bunch of skiis. Johns. I wonder if they call them Johns in Prague. Or if they call them "Juans" in Spanish speaking countries. I knew a Juan once. He stole all my laundry detergent. I hate him. He probably goes to prostitutes.

Anyway, she walked up beside me again, but I didn't stop.

"You like sex?"
"Yes. But. Um. No. No thanks."
"Come on. Blowjob. Sex?"
"No, thank you. No offense."
Again with the politeness. I made it a point to look at her, really look at her. She was pretty. Wasn't even wearing that much make up. Not that I was swayed to take her up on her offer. I was curious as to what rates were in a country where beer averages seventy cents, but I wasn't going to ask.
"1500 crowns? Hotel room?" She answered my question for me.
Now, I worked retail once. I did, over time, develop an instinct for when people vacillating over their purchases would end up saying yes. It's jsut an instinct. Maybe the hunter/gatherer instinct innate in humans has evolved into a killer instinct for other modern tasks. In which case, do I look that hard up? Dude. it's a freaking hooker. Gross. Really. Gross.
"No, honestly. It's okay."

the she walked off, borne back ceaselessly to the past.

letters to the editor, part 2

2006-02-16T01:36:00.000+07:00

dude, so did you make it to TGI Friday's or what? your blog left me hangin, especially cuz you said you'd have more babbling later in the day -- but you never did. come on eric, entertain me!

p.s. -- yesterday's chronicle had a really good story about how shitty the giants are -- http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/chronicle/archive/2006/02/12/SPGUHH725M1.DTL

-chris, portland, or

well, chris, i must admit that yes, i did go to TGIF's last week. and i also must admit that i spent an exorbitant amount of money for their wings. i should reiterate my strong distaste for TGI Friday's back home. it's awful. but familiarity in a foreign land does not breed contempt, it breeds comfort. i mean, an alligator with sunglasses? whatever. street signs indoors? now i've seen everything.

total meal at TGI Friday's:
plate of 12 wings: $9.50
Jalapeño cheese burger: $10.00
staropramen beer: $1.20
total meal + tip: around $22

yes. i could have walked less than five blocks away and eaten thrice the food for 1/3 of the price, but like i said. i gotta have my wings.

it's unfortunate that my craving couldn't be contained for a few more days because my aunt (we'll just call my dad's first cousin my aunt because honestly i don't know what the hell she really is, semantically speaking, if "semantically" is really a word) in vienna pointed out a Hooters to me in the middle of town.

ah yes, the wonders of globalization.

just kidding. it would have been unwholesome to go to such a blight on the overall culture of the world while visiting one of the world's intellectual capitols. wouldn't it? i don't know. but man. their wings are so much better than the wings at Friday's. actually, i could find a live chicken, rip its wing off, skin the feathers, sprinkle some tabasco on it, and take a bite and it might have been better. mmm....live chickens.

so Hooters wings are a guilty pleasure. i say guilty because i'm not one to further continue to systemized degaradation of women. but while i'm at it, here's some other taxi cab confessions of guilty pleasures.

-i'm afraid of heights. we went up this gigantic ferris wheel that offered fantastic views of vienna. evven though we were in a cabin type thing, surrounded by literally tons of metal, i feared for my life. especially when the wind kicked in. wait, this is not a guilty pleasure. but i'm not gonna pussyfoot around it any more. i'm scared of heights.
-dude. i really do like avril lavigne's music
-ditto "head over feet" by alanis morrisette
-i thought the notebook was a pretty decent movvie
-i sometimes find myself rooting for the underrated white basketball player
-when i was 17, i killed a hobo with a pitchfork

damn. i shoulda gone to hooters.

blogger fucking sucks

2006-02-15T20:04:00.000+07:00

aaaarrrgghhh

letters to the editor, part 1

2006-02-15T02:27:00.000+07:00

from reader Meg Ryan (really her name) of Portland Oregon:

"weiner schnitzel is usually veal. but sometimes it's called hunchen schnitzel, which is chicken schnitzel."

thanks, Megan. Say hello to Darius Miles for me. Me and him used to go get our hair did together.

i call the big one "bitey"

2006-02-15T01:41:00.000+07:00

to those of you back home that like to refer to me as intellectual, i'd like to point out that when i went to vienna this weekend, i was surprised to see that "wiener schnitzel" in Vienna (Wien) has nothing to do with chili dogs, corn dogs, corn dogs dipped in chili, french fries, milkshakes, milkshakes dipped in chili, or any sort of sausage in a bun based meal. rather, it was basically a large flat chicken strip. personally, i know nothing in German other than the "danke shoen," "nien!", "du hast mich" and "mercedes", so this is a loose translation, or a theory if you will, that Wien = Vienna. Schnitzel = food. So Wiener Schnitzel then would be "veinnese food." i could be way off on this. but if this is true, then "Wiener Schnitzel" is a pretty all-encompassing term, hence the way it's thrown about in the states to speak of the aforementioned corndogs, chili dogs, corn dogs in a bun with chili cheese on them, and the like. bottom line? I'm dumb.

Wiener = Viennese
Schnitzel = food
Mono = one
rail = rail

now to those of you back home that like to refer to me as a dumbass, i am announcing my intention to go to the opera while i'm here in prague. yes, i did get a bit of high culture in Vienna, with stopovers at Mozart's house (well, the one surviving apartment he lived in [www.mozarthausvienna.at]), a show featuring the music of Strauss and Mozart, and a few hours spent at the Belvedere Museum, which, unfortunately, has little if anything to do with a certain charming English butler and his wacky adventures in middle america. but at said Strauss/Mozart show, there were excerpts from "The Marriage of Figaro" that were acted out by two opera singers: an asian dude (they make Opera singers in Asian, much to my surprise), and a hipster chick with dyed blood red hair. I've never thought opera was anything I could appreciate, because really, who wants to see some fat chick dressed like Thor sing Italian nonsense? I sure as hell don't.

But much to my surprise, i could tell what was going on. Kind of. So we'll see. It'll be like an IQ test. If I go and I understand what's going on, then I have a new topic of conversation at highbrow parties. If not, I'll just go back to watching ballgames with a bucket of KFC in my lap. No skin off my back.

mmm...KFC.

By the way, there's about two KFC's per block in Prague.

put another shrimp on the barbie

2006-02-14T01:10:00.000+07:00

for people back home whose only "taste" of Vienna, so to speak, is those little tiny cocktail sausages in a can, I'm sorry to inform you that nobody here eats those.

So like a true backpacking college boy, I went to Vienna this weekend. I have several impressions of the city, all positive. But my first impression, for some odd reason, was that it reminded me of Chicago.

Being that I only lived in Chicago for three months and I was in Vienna (that's in Austria, for the mongoloids of the audience) for about 43 hours, you should take this statement the same way you take everything else I say. Which is to say, take it with several grains of salt, some green tabasco, and with a mini parasol sticking out the middle. Mmmm...parasol. But Vienna is immediately a much more modern city than Prague. There is still that palpable sense of history inherent in all European cities, but something about Vienna gives the city a little bit more class, and I don't mean that in a derogatory way towards the lovely city of Prague. It probably speaks more to the long history of Prague snobbery than it does to anything negative about Prague that I say that. All I'm saying is that there's a long line of culture here - high culture - that is famous worldwide: Mozart, naturally. Strauss. Sausages. Prague is a bit humbler, I think. Less ostentatious.

But that made me wonder. If Vienna, not that this is accurate at all, is the Chicago of Europe, what would that make Prague? Given the age of Prague, the size, the politics, and the overall feel of it as well, I'd draw parallels between Prague and Boston (and I've only been to Boston for about four days). It's older, there is a wealth of college-aged [pseudo] intellectualism there given Prague University and exchange programs with several US Schools, most notably NYU and Miami Ad "School." It's smaller. Vienna is much more spread out, and the space they left in the city for parks and greenery reminded me of the lakefront in Chicago. There's even a small amusement park in Vienna that reminded me of Navy Pier. Prague is very easily navigated on foot. So is Boston.

Look at me, I'm so well-travelled.

Anyway. If that's the case, what about San Francisco, my home of homes? I'm willing to wager that most people would agree that New York would be most similar to London, in that both are booming megalopolises (megalopoli?), cradles of diversity, and basically where everything goes down. I was thinking San Francisco might be Amsterdam, because of the pretty liberal attitude towards everything. Or maybe Paris, because they're both picturesque and home to a bunch of fruity anti-war cowards. I'm not sure. It's just me thinking out loud. You all are smart enough to know not to pay any attention to a damn thing I say.

Okay. I'm too sleepy for anything else right now. More incessant babbling later.

wtf

2006-02-13T16:47:00.000+07:00

holy shit, what the hell is that?

oh yeah, it's the sky. I remember that. cool.

pizza shooters, shrimp poppers, and extreme fajitas

2006-02-10T08:39:00.000+07:00

good news, everyone. there is a TGI Friday's on the West end of Wenceslaus Square, and they allegedly have buffalo wings.

Granted, the only worse chain to eat at in America is Appleby's, but I'm willing to put aside my personal bias and several year old boycott of TGIF's to have reasonably decent hot wings. I'll be trekking through the delightful one degree snow flurries to get there. That's dedication.

That's also what multiple Buffalo Wild Wings internet banners in one day will do to you. Bastards.

god bless america, land that i love

2006-02-10T01:03:00.000+07:00

good news, everyone. the "making the ad" installments of this blog are on temporary hiatus as we begin phase two of the process: execution. so i won't be boring anyone with meandering free writes or essays about hybrid cars or the creative process, especially since you hacks all use this blog for mining ideas anyway.

so those of you more devoted readers will notice that there was no new post yesterday. that's because i passed out when i got home, thanks to 1.5 liters of dark beer in my stomach from Prague's hottest cajun/creole restaurant, "Red, Hot, and Blues."

i think it was my second post where i proclaimed defiantly that i would wait before posting my "top 10 things i miss about america." well, to preface today's installment, i need to start with said list. so here.

1. Buffalo Wings. Specifically, Buffalo Wild Wings' Blazin' and Spicy Garlic wings for 35 cents every tuesday. If and when I get back to the states, i'm routing my flight through any city with a Buffalo Wild Wings. Or maybe i should just freaking go to Buffalo, NY.
2. Water. I swear if i have to drink another $%#)ing soda water, i might dig up Mozart's body so I can put my fist through his skull. And Mozart wasn't even Czech. I'm that frustrated with this. Dude, water. Out the tap. I don't care. Soda water was invented by the SS.
3. Sports on TV. For a regular guy like me, there's no better way to decompress after a day at the office than plopping on the couch and watching an NBA or MLB game for three hours. I'm serious. It's orgasmic. My options here are professional darts or the African Cup of Nations, and even that is sporadic. I don't know what the hell is going on when I watch these. That's not relaxing, that's frustrating.
4. English. pretty self explanatory. don't take for granted the ability to make conversation with 90% of the people you see everyday.
5. IN-N-Out Burger. If someone told me they would give me an In-N-Out Burger only if I first killed a clydesdale with a tackhammer, i would not hesitate and i would start hacking away. I would get a double double with grilled onions, animal style fries, and a chocolate shake. and this is #5. think about the depravity that i'd be down for to get some delicious hot wings.
6. the newspaper. What do you mean they captured Sadaam Hussein?
7. Fox News. It keeps things in perspective for me. Really, it does. Hard to explain. watching it for me is like watching a gruesomely brutal fistfight. you scream, you're appalled, and afterwards you're happy you're not involved.
8. simpsons reruns. because i still watch them even if i have them on DVD.
9. Jeopardy. or maybe i just miss screaming wrong answers at the tv. or maybe i just miss screaming.
10. oh yeah, i guess i miss you losers back home that read this garbage. you guys are cool too.

So anyway, as you can see by this list, i love hot wings. tuesday, at around 10am, for some reason - maybe because thousands of miles away it was 35¢ wing day at buffalo wild wings - i suddenly had an intense urge to eat 44 wings. or maybe it was because my idiot friend jon forwarded me an email titled "do they have this in prague?" about a guy eating 173 wings to win the national wing bowl in philly, which i felt was a passive aggressive form of taunting me. no, we don't have wing eating contests here. i don't know if czechs are into competitive eating.

well, i have my one class here and my teacher told us that his favorite hobby is eating. so naturally, he was the man to ask about where to get hot wings. he recommended a place to me, and i had no problem going there after work.

immediately, i'm impressed with the place. there's a live four piece blues band who were very good. three of them were euros, but if you closed your eyes, you wouldn't know. and the singer was american. the beer came in those half liter glasses (expensive. almost two bucks each. wtf). so i was happy. until i got my 12 wings.

i don't like people that use the internet to incessantly complain about the state of things in their insignificant world. so i try not to complain. but these were the worst wings i've ever had.

here's my theory on good hot wings. what makes good hot wings: lots of hotness. lots of vinegar. and they have to be deep fried. $@%^&&#$@$%@#^%# i'm making myself hungry.

i got 12 wings. they were the smallest wings i've ever seen. they weren't fried, they were baked. they weren't hot, it tasted more like sweet and sour sauce. the bleu cheese dressing was an off-white color. arrrrggggghhhhhhh.

maybe this is karma for that time i tried to kill my office at our annual chili cook off. probably. but that's a story for another day.

expatriates, please help me. i need spice in my life. sadly, i doubt vienna will help. unless they've started cooking vienna sausage (a staple of my childhood) with cayenne peppers.