Shanghai'd in Saigon

Taxi from airport to Pham Gau Lau.  Go Go 2 bar - beers at the bar, expats, go-go girls, bartender with hindu like dervish eyes - boy holding court with the frat boy group out on the corner street patio under the crooked sidewalk palm tree.  Left around 5 am from club with a working girl from bar - girls fighting for attention - headed to the hotel down the way that she picked.

shower nice room, 10$ for 2 hours.  concierge looked like a thug - unenthused by me - banging on the door after 2 hours demanding payment.

Morning with Dao - read me his book in the morning around 10 am.  then to jewelry store for currency exchange.  scooter tour of the city on the back of Dao's bike.  Art museum > war museum > coffee on the corner - telecom workers on tall narrow rickety bamboo ladders.

Saigon river - palace - pagoda- ho chi Minh Statue - Notre Dame Cathedral
Cruising thru back alleys and round abouts, dinner and beers with Dao (fried chicken / rice)  watched two cocks fight in the restaurant.  30,000 dong tab - paid for Dao of course
Met his wife in some drive-by back alley.  He later found me a hotel.  Paid, was shown the room.  Then to the ATM to pay Dao, none work!!

Coffee and Tous Le Jous on the pation balcony second floor - prostitution solicitations - girls on top of crotch rockets, haggled angrily with Dao over the price, then back to the guest house
nap > shower > televeision > budget review ) stress about money situation - went to leave for a walk and front door was closed and locked - it was 12:20 am.  owner folding laundry turns to me and says "save your money" I went up to the room and slept.

Awoke by 10 am and left guest house and walked down to Bien Than Market.  Walked around the market - before I reached the market I was harrassed by at least 5-6 cycle / scooter drivers, ate breakfast at the market.  chicken skewers, pineapple shake, orange juice, tab was 47,000 dong or 2.50

walked around town for 2 hours - Caravelle (war correspondents hotel) - rex Rooftop restaurant

found an interesting back alley market!  harrassed again by cyclo drivers asking if I wanted "happy ending massage"  lunch at street stall by Vietcom bank.  Discovered the Bahn Mi Sandwich!  fucking awesome!
walked around the financial district and then almost shit my pants.  the sandwich?  barely made it to the KFC on the corner.  Bought a water and took a violently explosive shit.

Walked back to the guest house.  mid afternoon squalor - languid.  walking around to find a wifi cafe.  realized internet was available at the guest house.  emailed Anandi and JOsh and bank about the card.  took a shower. relaxed smoked some weed.  left house and went to the ATM.  still no luck.  Met an Italian on a patio cafe and a Brit tried to help me but to no avail.  Wandered around the tourist district of Pham Gau Lau for 1 hour -  place is exotic, neon, surreal, languid, alive, creepy, intelligent, telecom nightmare, eerie, invigorating, exciting, fast yet relaxed,  quick with zen alertness, but without anxiety of the moment.  or overt posturing, absent of rule, regulation, etc. reminds me of my youth over at my friend Keith's house where it seemed that anything was possible.

Was offered 10 massages.  5 offers of weed.  2 offers of opium.  3 offers of sunglassses.  3 prostitution solicitations.  Had coffee on the corner with Mr. Hung who had been following me offering a cyclo ride, weed, and a girl "boom boom" tried to ditch him but he found me at the street stall and sat and enjoyed coffee with me.  He gave me a smoke.  We sat there maybe 1 hour.  I tried to talk to the beautiful girl at the stall - she smiled - then her boyfriend showed up.  Hung warned me to stop . . . . I went home.

Thursday:

I went to find an ATM in Pham Ga Lao area again.  - my credit card finally worked but it was for cash advances only.  Celebrated down the street alley from the guest house and met one of the hostess bars.  and one of the girls, whose name was Diem - beautiful smile, high cheek bones - gentle demeanor, kept smiling and bowing to me.  she said that she was a busshist.  - and didn't smoke, drink, do drugs, or eat meat.  Here English was surprisingly good.  Went home around 1 am.

Friday:

Got up.  paid for the room - checked emails.  walked towards Ben Than Market and ran into cyclo driver who insisted on driving me for "free" I refused but he kept following until I finally acquiesed and let him drive me.  We had lunch together at a small food stall in the center of the market.  I left the market and went walking around the city again and down back alleys, had a street coffee, market vendors, made it back to the hotel for a shower, nap, checked emails, ate a late breakfast lunch on the Pham Ga Lau strip.  Watched TV until 8 pm then left and went to the cyclo bar again to see Diem.   She was happy to see me and we talked about family, kids, marriage, her job, how she had never felt this way about a customer before.  Talked about how she wanted to go to Korea to get a nose job.  Told her she could stay with me if she ever got the money saved to come.  Went home late and knocked on the slated aluminum garage door for the owner to let me in at around 1 am.  I also had a cafe with the gremlin Nyong, before seeing diem.

Saturday:

Early morning and hungover.  Josh and Nicole were waiting for me in the lobby.  Stayed just around the corner from my roaming house.  Giddy excitement early morning Saigon - walked to Ben Than Market again, passed more cyclo drivers, harassing each of us incessantly, crazy scooter traffic, crazy crosswalks, the park, Nicole pointing out jungle tree variations, enamored with the architecture around the square that encased the market proper.  Street vendors, swindlers, fruit peddlers, petty theft artists, etc.  Ate again at a corner food stall in the middle of the market. beef pho, pineapple juice, spring rolls, conversation with owner, Vietnamese Canadian tourist excited we had visited her homeland and eager to connect with us.  A sweet lady eager to share her story.  Finished eating and walked the market trying to "just look" then finally left quickly after realizing that idea was impossible to realize in Vietnam.  We crossed the streeet at the roundabout by the Ho Chi Minh Statue.  We kept walking and explored roundabouts and street alleyways, and nooks and crannies of central Saigon.  We walked down to the Caravelle Hotel and the Rex rooftop hotel where during the war the journalists would watch as the imerpial American forces would drop bombs on the outlying villages, seeking in vain to root out the Vietkong.  We finally stopped for coffee on a large expansive patio that was filled with beautiful potted jungle plants and ferns.  We completed our first writing assignment.  During our assignment one of many torrential monsoon rainstorms began, which kept there at the cafe longer than normal.  The rains kept us pinned to our chairs long enough for us to finish our writing assignment, finish a good conversation, and begin to drink beers.  Walked to the street stall where I ate the Banh Mi.  I wanted Nicole and Josh to try it.  We ate and then  walked back alleys and rougher sections of Saigon back to our corner of the tourist district to our respective guest houses.  We stopped briefly for a street coffee.  Kids were playing in the street next to us with no clothes on - traditional Vietnamese fruit / vegetable vendors trolling the sidewalks and alleyways, scooters leaning parked against sidewalks - the drivers leaning against them in the afternoon languid heat, intelligent looking Vietnamese men reading the Saigon Newspaper, patiently and serenely, waiting for the next customer, but not to concerned about marketing themselves.  We bought ponchos in a back alleycorner market for $2.00.  perfect for our trip to the Mekong.  Strolled the Saigon streets a little more taking in the sights and sounds.  Nothing familiar here.  everything seemed exotic.  Got a couple of Saigon street beers and walked back to Josh and Nicoles guest house.  Walked all the way to the river - food, charming souvenire shop featuring old leftover propoganda posters from the war.  Walked past the Apocolypse now bar, which was nothing too special.   Had patio beers and made some phone calls.  Went to the cycle bar again and instroduced JOsh and Nicole to Diem.  Diem gave us directions to meet Ted at Bernies.  Bernies was lame as shit.  Surprsise surprise.  Nicol's friend knows we have one night in town and picks Bernies.  Can you say tool?  Nice guy, I guess, but from what I could tell, has horrible taste in restaurants, especially for a first time in Saigon.  We cabbed it over to the Go2 bar and Ted and his buddy C3PO followed on their expat motorcycles.  We had a few more beers with those 2 douches before they left us.  they left after a round which was no great loss.  Josh and I then scored opium from an 18 year old gay Saigonese kid who was peddling cigarettes, weed, and opium, depending on how much time you spent talking with him.  We were in Saigon, right?  We decided to score some after the price became reasonable.  Went back to J and N's place to drink, smoke, etc.  We had a philosophical conversation about aconviction, drug use, religion, etc.  The opium was fragrant so not pure as JOsh informed us.  We took a bunch of hits off the makeshift aluminum pipe and we all became serenely giggly like the happiest of traditional buddhist masks.  Placebo effect?  Probably a little.  but the drug definietley did something curious to our collective psyche's..

We also made plans that day with the Gremlin to take us to the Mekong the following morning atop his and his 2 buddies scooters'.  Perfect.

Expats Touring the Mekong

1)
Waited on hand and foot by eager barely English speaking Vietnamese hired scooter guides.  Lost in translation but faith and adventurous spirits leading us to jungle gardens where roosters squak, pythons lie, tall ferns grow, and where beautifully serene, French colonial estates are tucked behind lush jungle palms and dense green vegetation.  Coconuts above and the delta below.  Young kids swimming in underwater river caves, in underwear.  beneath foot bridges where Vietnamese women serenely ride atop old cruiser bicycles wearing traditional farmer hats and assuming the most erect exotic postures.  Lush green foliage rising high along narrow brown silt watered tributaries that wind maze-like through jungle inlets and mangrove forested jungle canopies.  A mangrove oasis of haunting predatory species, somehow collaborating with an imported version of the south of France, to make a very winning combination of scenery.  Today we entered one of the worlds most notorious jungles.  We feasted on like the best of former colonial expats, paying homage to all the writers from before.  Like Hemingway in Spain, Henry Miller in Paris, Richard Burton in Africa, etc.......We feasted on exotic spring rolls and elephant ear sized fish in the middle of the Vietkong jungle, under a thatched cabana roof veranda, napped on hammocks, as the Vietnamese guides became our butlers catering to our every whim and off-beat fancy.  Ah, life was good.  The price for admission was obviously a little higher than expected but the things we discovered during the afternoon made it well worth it.  Our collective muse was in awe of the place and the journey.

2)
A hell of a trip.  Hunter S would have been proud.  First time tour through Nam with a crew of six.  Three somewhat green North American lonely planet backpackers looking for a Southeast Asian best bargain.  And 3 Pham Ga Lau scooter driving guides with dentally challenged smiles, available scooters, slinging slick street corner Saigon tours of the delta.  Was it more than we bargained for?  They flashed smiles and used their best Saigonese demeanors toto charm us for 2 days.  and 2 nights.  But when it came to pay the agreed upon tab it was all sour looks, head nods, and grumpy standoff.  We honored the deal, did we not?  Oh, I guess they went above and beyond the call of duty and we owed them the unagreed upon compensation.  Interesting.  So this is how they do business down here.  What was the social contract again?  Oh yeah. . .

Gremlin pointing to each of us says the following,

"2. 2 2. 200,000 dong.  You.  You. You.  Don't worry!  My friend!  (points to me) I no worry!  Boat.  Scooter.  I.  You.  No worry.  Very cheap.  Very good.  Okay?  We do! No worry! "  WE repeat the deal back to him as we understood in his egregious attempt at using the proper pronouns to explain our collective business together.  But now back in town after the trip has concluded, the folk-lore of the ancient fabled Orient city is beggining to cast a long and harrowing dark menacing shadow over our late afternoon alleyway settle up.  The six of us crowded around three scooters in a crowded loud alleyway are staring at each other with a real contempt, each to the other.  Three days of shared meals, coffee breaks, a hotel stay, a first time Mekong Delta experience for the 6 of us, a lobster dinner on a French veranda in the middle of the Vietnamese mangroved jungle, all coming to an end like this.

Flashback to the Annoyances:
(like a movie, quick clips of what we thought was a charming crew, viewed from a lens that has been adjusted to view form a different angle)

-broken English expressions
-how many near misses on the highway?
-blind overtakes on grid locked 2 way trafficked bridges
-took guy to his hometown
-"my guy not eating"
-pinch points
-the hurried rush - nonsensical - once back in town the mad dash rush to find the "atm"
-the roundabout conferences on scooters in the middle of midday rush hour in Saigon
-60 km an hour in a torrential downpour

Hweshick Dinners

I sit there and watch as the boiling broth of seafood, including a live octopus, moves and squirms around beneath the lid.  My appetite?  Elsewhere.  It’s another hweshick, a post shift co-worker dinner – always somehow at a restaurant that serves the most exotically gross national dish, “Ohhhh mahsheesoo!”, they exclaim in collective delight – “Not so much!”, I think – fucking every time without fail, these stupid affairs lead me to the worst dinners, to dishes that would never make it internationally, because they are goddamn gross as shit.  I grin, and act as if it’s such a novelty to be eating another fucking disgusting preparation of seafood done in all the wrong ways.  Oh! Look!  This time a bunch of seafood is in the same broth!  Awesome!   Can I please gnaw on a prawn still in the shell!  Then can I follow that unsatisfying bite up by maowing on a giant, rubbery, boiled, bland-as-shit octopus tentacle? Awesome!  “Masheeso!”  So glad that I came!  I think of Bukowski and so much of life being an unromantic test of grit, endurance and private sarcasm - just another chance to prove my social stamina and wits in a culture as awkward as eating spaghetti with chopsticks.  I’m expected to attend these painful socially maladroit fucking gatherings every so often and they are as dreadful as the live octopus that is slowly boiling to death in the broth in front of me.  I’m always invited, yet never made welcome.  It’s a very weird thing indeed.  But Confucianism in Korean culture seems to have mastered the distillation process of social awkwardness down to a science.  And as a foreigner, marinating in it every so often, will bring about some hatefully cynical and sinister thoughts, such as the following.  Apologies.  

It’s just that for two hours I overhear bits and pieces of conversational tidbits in Korean, understanding just enough to know that they are talking about me at times, shared anecdotes around the table of mostly Korean middle aged women, save for the two younger women, my age, who seem to be talking the most shit.  Why?  I have no idea.  I’ve established very cordial and efficient working relationships with both of them.  Yet, as I sit here, my name is mentioned more than once to which it is then followed by a self-satisfied collective session of laughs, chuckles, smiles and glances from the Korean Ya-Ya Sisterhood.  No one attempts to hide their contempt or the blatantly obvious effect that their behavior is having on the token foreigner.  I sit there and fiddle with my smart phone.  I give them not any indication that I understand, nor give a flying fuck about anything that is being said.  Occasionally, I look up and around the table, attempting to make eye contact and engage my presence with anyone gracious enough to bring me into the laughter or funny anecdote.  No one seems willing.  I look back down to the phone and scroll mindlessly for someone to text.  I yawn.  I hear my name.  This time I look up so as to not to appear completely aloof, and to assert to the contrary of the table’s collective opinion, that I’m not, in fact, retarded.  I look up.  I look around.  Still no one cares to bring me in on the inside joke, literally, anecdote after anecdote, for nearly 30 minutes, definitely about me, to which everyone seems to be so amply amused by.  

Finally, one of the teachers says something to appease my paranoia.  She gives a half-ass attempt to translate.  She seems full of shit.  She waited too long to bring me in.  It’s too late. I don’t believe her.  My contempt for the group has festered.  My good humor has boiled to death, much the same as that octopus that squirmed awkwardly to death in the broth.  I try to give off an easy-going, good-natured demeanor but my patience and graciousness expired, my imagination now drives my mood into a cynical prickishness and has unburied and laid bare the misanthropic maladjusted maudishness that is my usual self, never far beneath the surface of my seeming good-natured spirit and it has begun writing the word ‘cunt’ in bold typeface font across my visual spectrum.  Everything is now colored with the ill-will of my emotional auto-correct.  And as I look around the table I don’t see faces but a single eloquently legible noun, and it’s plural.  I wanna upturn the table like Christ at the last supper, in a mounted fury and self-righteous display of anger at unjust and unnecessary social persecution.  I think about all the past times in the office or in private conversations when I was an altruist.  All the times when I let egregious, laughable, retarded usages of the English language slip beneath my finely attuned radar of contempt.  I am now flush with anger at the kindness I’ve shown to these people, considering the ease at which they talk shit right in front of my face to each other, and seem to revel and relish in the fact that I can understand very little of the insults and condescension, but just enough.  I'd dismiss the gossip and rude manner in which they've conducted themselves this evening and say it was a cultural thing,uniquely Korean.  But I'm not buying that anymore. If it's cultural, then it is a culturally >>>

A flood of nuanced emotions and violent images pass by in a barrage of immediacy.  Somehow I manage not to let any of them creep through the cracks of my physiology, manifest, and disaffect my countenance.  I smile.  I am Brando.  They have no idea.  I wait.  I wait 2 hours.  They still talk.  It’s now 7 pm – 3 hours since my work day ended.  Yet, I’m still on the clock.  "Fuck this" I think.  It becomes unbearable.  I finally get up and dismiss myself to the bathroom.  Any excuse, to get-away from the thick awkwardness of Korean Confucianism and xenophobic, gossiping post menopausal hairy ungroomed, bitter, resentful cunts.  Fuck them.   

In a self-protective pivot of consciousness my mind reels.  I tally the score.  I calculate in poignant comedic vignettes as to whom the joke is actually on.  I have a private snicker.  I look into the mirror and remember the true score.  A Jack Nicholson smile creeps onto a corner of my mouth.  These idiots pay my rent, and give me 5 weeks of paid vacation, annually.  I work 25 hours a week and get paid for 40. I have health insurance, a government pension and get a severance package when I decide to finally bail. Essentially, I get paid by their government to ‘teach’ their children and fuck their women.  Now that is fucking funny!   I think about Manila, where I’ll be in a month with my 19 year old Filipina lolita on a hotel rooftop, poolside, sipping boutique cocktails and getting a tan, while staring at my ladies perfect size C cleavage, knowing that every night of a long 4 day weekend will be a good night, watching those bounce in my executive hotel suite. A room with a view.  I’ll be jet-setting to the South Pacific, yet again, and miles away from these awkward Korean fuck-headed-teachers, from my stupid-ass English teaching job, and from moronic barely-monosyllabic-English-speaking-retarded-kimchi-eating-pre-pubescent-bratty-twats, and the working class shithole of a Seoul city village, where I live.  So, it looks as though I’m still ahead of the game and by a wide margin. 

I take my lonely place back at the table.  Dinner finally ends.  Thank the fucking Lord.  We’re leaving.  We exit the terrible seafood restaurant.  Oh, wait. . . they now want to head for coffee!  “Not a chance in hell.” I think.  I bail.  I wave goodbye to the herd of Korean jackals as they head towards the coffee shop and give one last "Masheeso!" which loosely translates to "delicious".  Finally the weight lifted, I exhale and slowly begin walking home.  Opening the door to my place, I look around my well-furnished apartment, gaze at the upcoming travel itinerary posted on the refrigerator, uncork a fine bottle of Chilean Malbec recently gifted to me and smile,  "How very masheeso, indeed."

Indonesia: The Perfect Experience is a Myth

Kuala Lumpur Airport

Malaysian stewardess with rockabilly styled pompador
Kuala Lumpur is a a tourist weigh station.  A site to see in and of itself.  Remarkably eccentric and weird characters on display here at all times.
Islamic fundamentalist drinking cokes and smoking outside.
European bobos wandering around looking like kindergartners at the zoo. So out of place.
Malay women seductively eyeing expensively dressed foreign men.
Malay transvestites, Malay man with skin pigmentation surgery on his face, a giant pink bloch with rough around the edges finish, everywherwe save for two giant spots of his natural pigmentation on his forehead.  Resembling a character in Return of the Jedi bar scene when Han Solo and Chewbaca shoot the alien under the table.
Asian women with fantastic figures, scampering everywhere. . .
Male Air Asian airline steward rocking a badass fauxhawk.

I hate flip-flops and most of the people who wear them.  I also hate long over-sized, ill-fitting cargo or surf shorts that try so hard to affect some sort of laid-back cool.

Anticipation is the key to a good vacation.  Anticipating dissappointments, anticipating logistical glitches in the itinerary, anticipating financial difficulties, anticipating incompetence from everyone to the check-in clerks, the matredee's, the taxi drivers, and government officials.

Globalization, despite it's homogenizing effects on cultural differences, still provokes some remarkably interesting cross blends of styles, cross pollinations, and leaving an amalgamation of provocative ontologies.

"It's time your ideas take flight."  - (Air Asia advertisement slogan)

When the modern meets the traditional in Asia, a kaleidescope of inspired fashion and technology is created.

Create your own mythology.  Narrate your own novel experience.  Is it not one?  You decide every moment.

Sri Lankans strolling through K.L. with "I love Bali" t-shirts.

Ubud, Bali

Ubud, Bali

Bali Observations
Indonesian girls riding scooters with erect straight postures, old women balancing huge baskets of fruit or meticulously stacked sarongs upon their heads. . . striding along narrow walkways with a zen like femininity that one rarely takes witness of in the Western world.  A soft heavy jungle mountain stillness that permeates the land here. . . a supernatural stillness would not be overstated, a stillness that lends itself easily to mental reflection and contemplation and silent reverie and ways to find inward centeredness and contentment.   A people that seem content in the patiently still moment. . . satin lampshaades, intricately carved and sculpted stone hindu and buddhist deities.  Traditionally garbed men in sarongs on motorcycles. . .  the balinese smile big and appear to be a very unashamed people. . . guilt, shame, and embarrassment seem to be very alien characteristics to their collective demeanor's. . . . school girls with jungle flowers in their hair and long white socks contrasting most perfectly with their soft brown complexions.

Two effeminate European idiots effectively ruin my perfect solitude writing corner one morning after flip flopping their fratty classless asses up the bamboo stairs and onto the balcony where I was sitting without distraction or annoyance and sit down.  The server comes up in an almost angelic manner to immediately offer them menus and cups of ice water.  The scene is a Balinese balcony perch overlooking beautiful exotic flora and fauna and the miopic daily street theatrics on the street just below and before the waitress can even attempt to serve them, they sit down and fan themselves with the menu and ask in an already incredulous and air of haughty dismissiveness, "Do you even have wifi?"  I wanted to get up and unannounced or without preface punch each of those fuckers square in the nose, knocking their egregious sorry excuses for humans from the balcony, smile at the beautiful Balinese server and resume drinking my coffee and scribbling in my notebook, as if absolutely nothing violent just happened.

On the way from the Denpassar airport the taxi driver went at length to describe the sex tourism industry in Bali that caters to primarily aging Japanese women with money to spend.  Shacking up in hotels with young Balinese boys for a sex-vacation of two weeks or so, rarely leaving the hotel for anything but the occasional shopping spree.

Morning in the rice fields , farmer entrepeuar of sorts, stops Ida and I and solicits us for a coconut juice under his makeshift cabana.  Beautiful businessmen

Middle school children in the town soccer field early mornings playing soccer and horsing around on scooters.

Balinese guitar player executing flawless covers of Hendrix, Floyd, Clapton, etc.

Chinese tourists with straw hat and strawberry shortcake checkered swim shorts and bright yellow crock sandals needed and was very deserving of a Johnny Knoxville kick in the proverbial kick in the nuts.

Guy chasing Meach and I with a newpaper down the street, dropping his price from 90,000 to 30,000 in less than 1/2 a block.

Male Chinese tourist looking in a very serious manner at carved wooden phallus bottle openers, grabbing each different size, holding it in his hand thoughtfully, examining the weight, curvature, etc.  without a trace of embarrassement - strictly business. Hahaha

Indonesian Muslims eager and flirty with us at the Uluwatu temple. . . monkey that stole Japanese women's money straight from her hand and then the Balinese temple staff chasing the monkey into the jungle vegetation behind the snack rest area and eventually bribing the monkey with food, bartering with him essentially, to give the ladies large bills back.

Padang Padang - surf culture

WE missed this beautifully world renowned surf spot in the most remarkable of rad Balinese lagoons because Ryan's stupid girlfriend Ida wanted to go and see the mega complex of >>DREAMLAND  that was a 1 hour bumpy windy highway ride to a remarkably unscenic vista of luxury condomoniums that had yet to be finished.  Basically took us to a construction site instead of one of the most notorious surf breaks in the world.  Fuck

Strange fruit selection in the van
Mangosteen, durian, etc
19th century colonialism via modernity in Bali
the amount of services that you can buy for $5, really
Cool breeze at the open air surfer cabana hanging off the cliffside

construction workers close by welding I beams

Fire Dance performance
3 Massages
pictures of courtyard
pictures of market place
pictures of women with incense

Food:
Pisang Epe (fried banana)
Mie Tit:  dried noodles, thick gravy, sliced chicken, mushrooms
Sate Ikan Tanjung:  fresh fish, coconut milk, lemongrass, garlic, chili's, grilled skewers
Ayam taliwang:  heavenly spiced roast chicken

Smoked Marlin sandwich on a Turkish pita bread with arugula, avocado, feta cheese, and aioli sauce

Chicken Satay with peanut sauce

Balinese Deities:
Rohngdah -evil
Bahrong - good

learning names of Hindu deities from our driver, Balinese temple man with beetlenut leaf in lip

first-aid stories

Sanskrit script - discussing the aesthetics of Asian language scripts

Farmed fish pool and numbered booths around - next to the open air restaurant

Expense Report:
cash budget - 12,350,000 Rp

taxi from airport to Ubud - 200 - 300,000
Guest House 1st night -
Visa on Arrival - 241,000 Rp ($25 USD)

Fastboat to Gili Meno - 300,000
Bangsal - Kuta, Lombok - 150,000 / driver

Airfare
Lombok to Denpassar - 300,000 / ticket




 Gili Meno Daydream

Gili Meno, Indonesia

the lombok straight high mountain peaks that rise and crest right off the waters edge.  tide breaks froth and slap along the pristine soft white beach coastline.  under a soft balinese wind, laying on the sand without a care in the world, as charmed sea shelled amulets dance around in the soft island breeze as sparrows flutter, bob and weave along the low tide breaks, and traditional fishing boats moored off the coast rock and kerplash with the tide.  pilowy cumulus cloud layers slowly drift like clean ocean dragon puffs lazily exhaling the condensation lifts off the waters edge.

balinese boys naked wahing in the mountain stream.  bamboo outriggers, teak furniture, mahogany, woven interior panels, snorkeling, colors of the schools of fish

Tequila Rose

So, I was getting set to fly back down to the Philippines. I visited the archipelago for the first time with my best friend Izzy Badger, who flew out for a rendezvous last August from the Pacific Northwest.  We hadn't seen each other in over 4 years, as I had been teaching English in Asia and he had been working for the Oregon state legislature back home.  But we decided to fulfill a novel boyhood romantic fantasy of getting ramshackled on rum in a like old colonial Spanish explorers for 3 weeks, first in Manila, and then onto Palawan.  And now less than 6 months later, I was setting up to leave for a second go around, a Christmas and New Year’s celebration back to the island of Palawan again but this time with my lovely little Filipina lolita, Sophia - my exotic little jungle flower, my Tequila Rose, plucked from the gritty, soiled strip, my Tequila Rose - whom I met one drunken evening with Izzy on a melee down Burgos Street in the Malate district of Manila that last August.

Airfare purchased and just days before I was set to leave, a story broke across my Facebook newsfeed.  The story read that a mayor from a southern province was just shot dead outside Terminal 3 of the Manila Ninoy Aquino International Airport.  The very same terminal that I would be passing through in no less that 72 hours.  Gazing away from the screen and out the window of my 3rd story villa apartment in Seoul, I briefly reconsidered my motivations for the trip and pondered my decision to tempt fate...

 - This was a working girl whom I was flying down to meet, after all.  What kind of ties did she have?  What was her angle?  Did she play me for the last 6 months over Facebook IM chat and pull one over on me?  She being only 20, was she really that saavy?  was I that incredibly naive?  no i thought, i have a very finely attuned bullshit reader, i've prided myself on that for many years.  it's sensors being so carefully set.  Dialed in, so to speak.  i know the score. i mean i've heard the stories of foreigners getting taken by Southeast Asian harlots looking for a way out of poverty predicament but I felt differently about this.  I've got a pretty good read on this one.  she is different.  she ain't gonna fuck me.  or will she?  all of a sudden my whole trip seemed lost in the lurch. -

Looking back to the screen, I finished reading the article, which explained that an armed assassin in a ski mask fired shots at the political entourage and then made his escape through heavy Manila traffic by motorcycle.  The mayor, his wife, and one of his political aides, as well as, a 19 month baby, with no relation to the mayor or his political entourage.  Lying limp and motionless, face down, each body began coalescing blood beneath as screams erupted from the Christmas travelers, bystanders and onlookers.  All three were pronounced dead on arrival to the hospital.  This was the third and obviously, final assassination attempt on this mayor's life by his political enemies.  “Nice,” I thought, as I finished the article and gazed back from my desk to the bed where I had my trustee travel bag and stream lined possessions and travel gear spread out.  As you get older it’s remarkable to notice how tragic news stories that once seemed so far away now somehow fold like ornately woven origami into ones travel itineraries.  Like quantum physics, worm holes in the fabric of a fifth dimensional quantum entanglement that as awareness increases so does one’s plot entanglements with cosmic uncertainty, linking one’s telos in an ever increasing chain of seemingly unrelated causal events, yet ever so real.

Manila is a crazy place, that much is clear, a place where one is constantly on guard.  Machete wielding mango cart merchants, dead looking new born babies in the arms of almost Garden of Eden naked beggars, shotgun toting armed security gaurds at banks, condo complexes, 7-Eleven’s.  Hands always ready on their pistol griped shotguns.  Armored trucks that look like small rectangular tanks.  A place where you see colonial architecture mired in frenzied globalized filth.  Construction sites that lack most first world safety oversight, complete with bamboo scaffolding, and workers in sandals not wearing hard hats and general overall lack of bureaucratic oversight.  A modern city blossoming like a lotus flower out of dirty stagnant cockroach infested flood waters of the Pasig river.  An old world citadel slum seeking a modern first world stride.  As was once remarked about Thailand by,     but could also be said of Manila: it is like a collection of 10,000 villages, or barrios, or barangays, which is the Tagalog version of the term for neighborhood or city district.   Beautiful Spanish catholic cathedrals next to the seediest girly bars. Alleyways where ferel cats scour bags of pungent jungle trash.  Palm trees sprouting through the sidewalks like large feathered tendrils swaying in the island breeze.  Jeepneys bombing down the dusty city streets like somekind of Madmax science fiction looking tanks that somehow look like the spawn of a futuristic Magellen vision of European colonization.  A vestige from the past.  A leftover manifestation of European colonization.  An aggressive chromed out armored looking chariot belonging to another era - that of the Spanish conquistadors, emblazoned with gaudy catholic ghetto names, like . . . . “        “    I think of Cervantes and fighting windmills.  These jeepneys look about as absurd, yet like Cervantes, are charming and endearing in their eccentricity.  Like always waiting for a group of Madmax of Dune-like post-apocolyptic thugs to jump out at any moment and lay waste and ravage a certain section of the city proper.  They look like vehicles that A walk through any barangay of Manila will yield so much mania, poetic poverty, dirt and grime and filth, and desperation, and enough anxiety to make even the most versed and saavy traveler question there motives for deciding to spend any time at all here.  Manila is a place that action movies are fond of using as a setting for international crime, etc.

Sophia.  She was a 19 year old working girl.  She worked at at a red velvet lounge named Rascals and that was her stage name.  A nice name.  Soft consonants that roll off the tongue like a gentle Spanish island kiss.  She was a physically gifted mamacita.  

As we entered the bar early that evening on the false pretense that we would just "pop in for a drink" we were overwhelmed by a greeting suited for a couple of Greek gods.  Ushered in by a 300 lb Filipino bouncer that looked like an extra for a . . . . into an empty lounge bar and about 15 girls in negliges walking towards us in six inch heels.  High backed half-moon shaped booths surrounded by mirrored walls, a bar set deep in the back and the cued hip hop of lil Wayne, we stepped through a heavy crushed red velvet curtain and down three stairs into a lair of harlots on smart phones {smoothing the transition from the sidewalk to the bar stool} .  Sophia caught my eye instantly, although already surrounded by girls soliciting our attention as we ordered our first round, Sophia came over cocquetishly but confidently and sat down next to me, in a bold direct maneuver edging out the others that completely surrounded us. She maintained eye contact from the moment she saw me looking at her at the side of the bar until she sat down next to me.  She said nothing.  After a moment of trying to gracefully turn away from the others eager to secure the contents contained in my wallet, I turned to her and said hello.  Sophia was young.  She looked young.  She was a young lolita vixen though and new it.  I wondered to myself how much she made.  Some people have a hard time with girly bars.  They have a hard time enjoying them.  They have a hard time getting past their morality about it all.  the thing is these girls make there livlihoods off these jobs.  I'm not saying that it is right but it is a fact.   

25^th Manila Airport Layover

On the flight from Manila to Palawan on Christmas morning, all was quiet and fine, until a sextet of drunken German idiots sat down in front of me, taking over the entire row, on both sides of the aisle of the small aircraft, much to my chagrin.  The loudest and most obnoxious, was big Alpha Top Dawg sitting directly in front of me.  His big undefined arms on display, peaking out from beneath his vacation singlet.  His audaciously unfashionable facial hair groomed elegantly to form an egregiously sculpted chin strap from side-burn to chin.  His drunken chorus responding to every humorous aside from their Aryan ring leader.  It was just a matter of time, I thought.  Drunkards are like pendulums, slow, direct, always linear moving, like wrecking balls.  As long as I stayed out of the wayward attention of their collective drunken belligerence I would be fine.  Christmas morning on a way to a beautiful island vacation is really no time for a drunken confrontation with a group of strange foreigners.  But now I see that they've unsheathed a bottle of liquor and begin brandishing it like they just one the World Cup, and begin passing around shots.  "Prost!" in an unharmonius clank of early morning shots.  This didn't look good.  Luckily, my dark black Rayban shades were on.  Despite the close quarters, and the increasing claustrophobia, thanks to my Deutsche speaking flying companions, I felt a level of anonymity that was just comfortable.  But it was then that I heard a random slew of English nouns in a heavily accented German.  ">>>>>>>"

Looking around the cabin to notice if there were any other captive English speaking audience members and only noticing Filipinos, a Chinese family, and a Korean couple in my general vicinity, I knew that these tangentially spatially related proper nouns related to random American geographical locations were directed at me.  I knew it.   Goddamn, I knew it.  At least my anticipatory skills were on par for the begrudging early morning Christmas festivities.  "Here we go"  I thought "and so it goes" with a furrowed eye-brow and slight incredulous smile starting to build into the side of my mouth. I briefly pondered the random association of American geographical locations, as well as the former president's full name, and concluded that this was his best attempt to insult my national identity... or was it my intelligence?  an egregious attempt to recall a high school civics class on American geography and impress the token American?  how did he know I was American anyway?  A question better left unanswered.  After allowing a pregnant pause, I gathered my thoughts into a sober line of reasoning and recanted from behind my Jack Nicholson shades, affecting an ominous narrative tone, saying,">>>>>>>>>>" It was a fine performance.  I would have marked a solid B+ on the delivery if it was an acting class.  Bravo!

But at about this time, my Palawan tricycle ride early morning to Balayong Pension House – 1,000 pesos

Sleep until early afternoon strung-out

Walk to get lunch at Vietnamese place and coffee

Walked thru the city, fruit stands

Got some late afternoon beers and watched MMA in the room

Skylight hotel dinner down the street – Tuna, vegetables, San Miguel, Tequila

Walked back to the hotel, changed

Got a tricycle to the Tiki Bar and watched a live cover band with Filipina singers

Got drunk and walked back to hotel, keeping an eye out for girly bars, passed out

26^th

Balayong Pension – 1,200 pesos (2 people) \

Woke up in time for the breakfast (cut-off is 9:30)

Walked down the street and looked at used clothes shack

Bought a collared shirt for 20 pesos, bought a coffee, bought scissors for beard, walked to the pier, and thru some alleyways, took some pics

Found a seamstress, sewing alteration shop across from the pension, had shirt altered from the shop for 100 pesos, shop details, lazy island breeze, etc

Flagged a tricycle down and took a ride to Honda Bay 11 am – 430 pm – 440 pesos

Drank in the bay at a shanty resto bar – got a nice afternoon buzz off 6 San Miguel pilsen beers (350 pesos) in the open island air, chatting with the young Filipina manager who could speak English

Took tricycle back to the airport 40 minutes to meet Maribel

At the airport met some young interns at the Tourism office who seemed flirty in a strange way

Then met Maribel, she was standing there sweetly waiting for me

Took the tricycle back to the pension, she laid her head on my shoulder and grabbed my arm, and was smiling and laughing sweetly not saying much

Slept and watched cartoons, had sex. . .

Lotus Garden for dinner, 1,700 pesos Calamari,

Tricycle ride to Tiki Bar, driver telling me I was a lucky man

Beers and snacks at Tiki Bar 1,500 pesos, 300 pesos on hotel snacks

27^th

Morning empanadas

Balayong extension 1 hour, 120 pesos

Bajao Seafood Restaurant 1,500 pesos

Shuttle to San Jose bus terminal, ostrich farm, bumpy ride thru traffic, rushed, as we were late

ATM withdrawal, 10,000 pesos, after multiple attempts to find online bank

Lexus Shuttle van to Sabang (2 tix) 600 pesos

Dinner 250 pesos in the rain at the Sabang shack

Sabang Pension at the pier 1,500 pesos

28^th

Fried banana churros/nescafe/mango juice 300 pesos

Walked Sabang beach

Hotel Breakfast next door 350 pesos

Scooter Rental, taken for a dumb tourist, 2,500 pesos (3 days)

Went swimming and had a massage. 

Bambua Nature Cottages check-in, relax, dinner spicy chicken curry soup and drinks 1,200 pesos

Bambua lazy evening drinking rum after dinner, then having crazy sex, maribel crying a little after telling me story about kissing another man.

29^th

Longsilog breakfast w coffee (2) 500 pesos

At Bambua

Sheridan late lunch 4 pm – Tuna, beef, onions, garlic, Tequila, San Miguel, Tequila Rose. . . 1,500 pesos

Rum, Coke, soap, crackers at local market – 600 pesos at small market “tindahan”

Went back to Bambua naked and took afternoon showers

Drinking rum and beers in the room, wandered around the Bambua grounds

30^th

Hamburger / water at beach while Maribel slept 200 pesos

Green Verde late lunch – kinilaw,  and tuyo (salty fish) and I had an American breakfast, fish then we did the zipline together.  We went back to Bambua and change and shower.

Dinner at Sheridan – Norwegian Salmon filet / vegetables/ potatoes/ 5 shots of tequila, 1 san Miguel, 1 tequila rose, pakbet and letchon Kawali, 2 bottles of water 2,415 pesos – it started to rain a little bit and we saw the rainbow and got the picture on the beach.

Then went to the philipino island shanty resto bar.  We had lots of beer there.

Then took the scooter back to bambua after not being able to start like a bobo.  Policeman started for me. I was feeling silly.

Then we went back to bambua and had more crazy sex.

31^st

woke up late and hungover again and took showers in the island humidity.

Saw andre in the morning and he took some pictures of us in the garden with the flowers.  We told him our plan to go to Daluyon to have the new years buffet and see the live band.  He said aw u should stay here because were having a party.  There is a german couple and a dutch couple. He said we paid to much for the buffet, blah blah blah.  Said we should come back after the dinner and watch the fireworks  from Bambua.  We said okay maybe we’d see him later.

We took the scooter back in the morning and tried to get the philipino American breakfast again, but the Green verde for breakfast.  Spicy squid and fried fish, and I had club sandwich and also eggs, French fries, omellete. 

Talked to the philipino man about the boats and the seas and the weather and the trips to el nido in the traditional boats.  Then we bought bus tickets from the man to go back to Puerto.

Walking the beach together and we went to daluyon to make sure about the reservation for the dinner. 

Then we walked back to Bambua because we had no scooter that day.

Took showers, had more beer.  Took a rest and then got dressed up for new years eve dinner date.  Andre gave us a flash light and we walked the back way to Daluyon for the buffet and music.  Before we went to dinner we went to the small Sheridan by the beach front and listened to Bob Marley and electronic beats and drank so much tequila and beer.  We got drunk before the dinner.  Then Maribel couldn’t eat very much.  Then went to buffet.  Heard live music and I ate so much and we had champagne (maribel’s first time drinking champagne).  So happy together taking pictures being lovely together. Getting really drunk then elaving and walking to the beach.  And we were playing in the sand and I was pushing in the swing hammock between the palm trees and you were going SO high and laughing.  Maribel was so drunk.  The stars were so bright and the night was unfolding beautifully perfect.  Then we went to the resto bar and Maribel worked a deal with the flashlight man.  1 bottle of rum, 2 beers, a cigarette, a coke, and a scooter ride home for like 200 pesos.  Then we ride back on his scooter and we were laughing and you were in the back arms around me holding tight, and kept reaching around a putting the cigarette in my mouth.  Then we got back to Bambua and Maribel blew all the good buffet food all over the ground.  She laughed and after blowing said that maybe the dog would eat it. And then the next day we saw that something ate it.  Then we drink with the german couple and andre and his crazy wife, getting jealous of andre.  Andre telling so many stories, won’t shut up, rum and coke and everyone was feeling good and drunk and then mom called Maribel and said about dad with the knife and went to jail and got so angry and she broke her phone and started crying later telling me about the family.   Then we saw fireworks with the german couple and andre and then went to bed in the hot room.  Then we had crazy sex and I pushed Maribel off the bed doggy style.  Her ass was in the air and her knees on the bed but her hands were on the ground and she kept telling me harder and deeper.  Wow.

1^st

Bambua breakfast – chicken adobo / coffee 500 pesos total for 2

We talked to andre before going to get our bus and he told us we were bobo’s and we should get money back because he was going to town to pick up a Japanese guests.  So we went back and refunded our tickets with the man at the beach and then took the ride with andre and his wife back to Puerto in the small bus.  It was a fun ride and we picked up some philipino villagers on the side of the road waiting for the bus.  They gave me and Maribel bananas.  Then we got back to Puerto and my cards didn’t work so I couldn’t pay andre back.  Shit.  Totally fucked.  Maribel’s thinking I’m a bobo.  Getting stressed because ATM’s are not working. Blah blah blah.  Andre says he can help me and gave me 4,000 pesos after taking us to get rotisserie chicken at the place in Puerto that he said was the best chicken on the island.  We ate at the cheap pension with Andre and his wife after we checked into the room where we could here the crazy roosters that were so fucking loud and annoying.  Then we went to the last bar with andre and his wife because his guests were running late and he was annoyed and he bought us more drinks and was being a nice man.  Remember giving a handshake before he left and saying I really appreciated his help.  He was a life saver.  Then we got a tricycle back to the cheap pension. 

Duchess Pension

107 E. Valencia Street

Mobile Phone: 0917-5530605 / Landline: (048)433-2873

http://www.duchesspensionpalawan.com/

Single Bed (fan room, common CR)                         P200

Double Bed (fan room, common CR)                       P300

Single/Double(private CR)                                           P650

Triple Sharing (private CR)                                            P750

Family (4 pax,private CR)                                              P900

And we got some beers and went to bed. 

2^nd

We woke up and had breakfast at the cheap resto bar. Longsilog and coffee.  Then we went for a walk and it’s so hot.  Checked the bank and the atm still doesn’t work.  Getting angry.  Maribel is sad because I got no money.  Then I want haircut but baby doesn’t wanna wait so she goes back to hotel to take a nap and I go get my haircut by the tattooed philipino man.  He likes my tattoos.  He gives me a nice haircut shave.  Then I go back to hotel and Maribel is sleeping like a bobo.  We wake up and take a shower together in the dirty shower. Washing each other with soap and kissing in the pension shower.  And then we go down stairs into the courtyard and I drink a beer and massage maribel’s legs while she tells me about the price of school and talking about family problems, etc.  then we go up to the room and have sex one last time.  Then we go to the resto again and eat dinner and then take a tricycle to the airport and then we were a little early and so we had two last drin sat the reggae bar with the band and the two friendly girls.  Then I took Maribel and we walked back to the airport and she left and I watched her go throught the glass window she was smiling and I was sad.  Our trip was over.  Didn’t know when I would see her again. 

 And there I was.  Christmas eve, alone on an island, riding a Philipino tricycle through a still slumbering capital city of Puerto Princesa, Palawan.  And damn it felt good.  Han soloing yet again.  Most of my friends married, domestically committed, or pro-creating and there I was, at 36, finally feeling as alive as I’d ever felt.  On my way to a small pension on the outskirts of town.  Arriving 3 days earlier than my Filipina Lolita for our first rendezvous together.  Ah, life is good.

 

A Streetfight in Seoul, South Korea

It was a Wednesday; a normal workday, save for the fact that I had misplaced my apartment key earlier in the afternoon and so. . . was locked out of my place.  Irritated after another long, frustrating day of futility at my ESL job, teaching disrespectful, passive-aggressive, *Confucian-fucked, kimchi-eating, shit-headed Korean adolescents, I had little patience for the current predicament.  I got home that afternoon defeated and ready for a nap. My landlord, who was refusing to answer his smart phone, didn’t enliven my spirits any.  I guess mismanaging tenets was his primary occupation.  I began muttering profanities under my breadth and stringing together quite impressive slews of poetically vitriolic soliloquy rants about the nature of my life teaching ESL and convincing myself ever so eloquently as to why Korea is indeed a god-forsaken, xenophobic, sexually repressed, backwards-ass squatting shithole of a rice eating Asian country, when it occurred to me: I usually leave my window open!  Mid vitriolic tirade a synapse fired and I realized that I usually leave my back window ajar with the lock unlatched.  Although, this small epiphany was also followed by the realization that said window does sit ready and willing for entrance, yet on the third floor of a brick building with no easy access.  The modest villa that I lived in, Hans Villa, as it was so named, was a four-story red brick box of an eye-sore.  

Quickly surveying my options I decided to go gung-ho and scale the backside of the building.  Never mind that I am a foreigner living and working in a very conservative Asian society, that I am white, 6 feet 3 inches tall, with broad shoulders, and a semi menacing shaved head.  I quickly jumped in a limber Bruce Lee-esque fashion up, one, two bounds on the wall - gingerly shimmying myself up holding onto a bolted gas line, using the space beneath as a toe-hold, I began to climb slowly, Spiderman-like up the wall.  At this poignant moment of my bad-decision, my fellow Hans Villa resident Kevin from Tennessee happened by on his way home and from beneath understatedly delivered a quietly audible rhetorical question, “Hey man, what are you doing?”  

With Kevin giving me directions from below, as well as, a bit of a visual spot, I managed, in vain, to heave my braced ninja stance from the cleaving precarious position on the gas line there three stories up and onto the window awning, which worked, but left me in a full upper body strong-arm position, just long enough for me to realize that my broad shoulders wouldn’t be able, with the best of dislocating decompression, to be squeezed thru the 45 degree opening.  So, in a another quick full swoop, I swung back to the wall in a fluid motion off the ledge to the ninja toe hold on the gas line and then shimmied back down the face of the building.  Kevin continued to watch with subtle head-nodding incomprehension and slight bemusement at the predicament.  It was obvious what I was doing and why I was up there and after hearing me bitch about the landlords’ lack of a prompt reply, told me that I could crash on his floor for the night, if needed.  I said I appreciated it and that I would if he didn’t get back to me – and of course, he didn’t. 

Anyway, we grabbed a small stock of beers to inform our evening’s conversation, before heading up to his 4^th floor closet space of an apartment.  We only occasionally saw each other, as we had drastically different schedules.  He worked at a hogwon (a private academy) and I was at a public school.  Yet, we still managed to catch up with each other for a drink or a run down the small stream that ran adjacent to the Olympic Park quarter of southeastern Seoul, where we both had been assigned.  Aside from my failed attempt at breaking and entering my own home and the unplanned evening guest for him, we had a decent chat.  We hadn’t seen each other for awhile and so it was good to air employment grievances, rap on about personal problems, cultural annoyances, girls and the like.  As an ESL teacher in a foreign country, it’s amazing how much you cherish a conversation with someone that you may or may not share much in common with, as you get to depths of communication in English that you’re bereft of so much of the time.  Fortunately for us, Kevin and I had enough in common to banter about over beers.  He was articulate and abreast in current geo-political affairs in Asia, and was also a fairly disciplined athlete, as was I. 

Anyway, on about the third beer, he mentioned that it was his birthday.  So, I gave a “Cheers!” on that unexpected note and we cracked another.  Halfway through that second I offered up that, even though it was a Wednesday and it was starting to get a bit late, that we should head out and grab a night cap.  I mean, it was his birthday after all.  Nothing crazy, but the thinking was that we were in Asia after-all and how many birthdays does one get to celebrate proper in Asia? 

So, with that charming little aside we pushed out the door.  I threw on a nice black sports jacket from his closet over my favorite collared button up and we were off.  It was fall but the air was beginning to crisp and a few leaves had fallen.  With the breeze sort of keeping us at attention on the curb out front, we flagged an orange cab and headed for Sinchon, a university party area that can be fun on most nights. 

We started at a franchise in Seoul known as Ho Bar.  I know, I thought the same thing when I first got here:  That it’s either what you think it is or it’s one of the most egregious errors in translation on the streets of Seoul.  Well, it turns out to be the latter, although I’ve never actually confirmed this.  Regardless of that name, which, as I said, isn’t in fact what you think it is, (although I have scored in one of these places and it WAS memorable), we headed inside.  These places are nice little dens, usually tucked away in large expansive basement spaces.  It feels like a club when you walk in, the pulsating laser neon lighting, the stroebing, state of the art digital effects, and thumping dance music that you can usually hear from the street.  Despite the clubbing vibe, it’s actually just a modern Korean pub.  The only thing fitting about the name Ho Bar is that it IS usually packed with exclusive tables of four or five Korean girls getting hammered over the Ho Bar special:  a liquor set-menu, usually Vodka, sometimes tequila, usually trading shots, sometimes using a mixer. 

As we entered, there were, as predicted, about three tables of strikingly attractive Korean girls strategically located in all corners of the space, and a twosome talking at the bar.  And no dudes.  Asia.  So staying with the thematic fengshui of this, we grabbed a strategic table as well, the location? Well, naturally, right in the middle of the four groups.  Closest were the two tables against the back wall, but both tables within ear shot from our table.  We sat down, got comfortable and then impressed the cocktail waitress with our elementary mastery of a cocktail order in Korean:  “Heineken du byoung erang Tequilla shot du gay joo-sae-yo” and took a deep breath.  It’s always that first sip at a bar that is the best, no? 

Well, we ended up, as you could probably guess, staying for more than the first.  Loosening up there at the table, Kevin got pretty drunk and started aggressively telling me that I was like a brother, in a way that I think that only maybe Southerners can relate to.  It was an endearing sentiment that he was bestowing on me in that basement and I appreciated it but I wasn’t ready for it.  He was so intense that I broke into a laugh at one point which I regretted but his single-mindedness on repeatedly telling me in absolute earnest confessional style, that I was like a brother to him was just too much for me to handle for some reason.  I was a few Tequila shots and beers deep, mind you.  His sentimental barrage, combined with the fact that he had ear-buds in from his iphone that made him look like some sort of almost military personal or a mercenary of sorts, eventually brought me to an uncontrollable burst of laughter.  He was physically fit, athletic and attractive in that every man sort of way.  And his sentiment was just a bit over-the-top for me.

So, anyway, the Tequila, the Heineken, and I found it funny; funny in that same way you uncontrollably laughed in church as a kid during serious prayers.  We were on our third or fourth Mexi-German tango at this point.  Despite my laughter and lack of reciprocity to his initial sentiment, somehow his earnestness was undeterred. 

Looking back on the night, I understand where his mind was.  His brother, a happy hard-working father of three, back in Tennessee had just tragically passed away the month before, apparently crashing his work truck into a telephone pole at about 50 mph after falling asleep at the wheel early one morning commuting to work.  I wish I had showed better decorum during that conversation but the liquor was working against me. 

Anyway, to distract Kevin back to the present moment became ever more challenging.  At this point I knew something had to be done.  He wasn’t as lucid as me, nor was he as jovial.  I attempted to approach a set of girls.  Kevin followed suit.  They offered us a seat at their table.  We sat down, engaged them and we were having a decent chat.  But despite the girls’ surprisingly open reception, he was still not in the state of mind to be a fun lover with me, instantly setting them on edge.  The table’s mood shifted quickly.  I knew that I needed to diffuse the situation, and get him into a better spirit.  I remember taking stock of the situation, as I am not one to want to hang around long with a buddy who is showing hallmark signs of loose-cannon.  It has happened and I’ll support them to a certain distance, but I’ll also cut and run, no second thought. . . it was completely unnecessary and a bit unexpected the way his demeanor quickly shifted on me that fourth round or so.  It was about that time that I tried to redirect his attention and thought to change the scenery.  He still wanted to drink, so I suggested leaving and grabbing a street beer in the alleyway, as it’s always inspiring as a Westerner, the neon glow of an East Asian alleyway, especially Seoul, at night.  So, we paid up and left. 

Outside we walked just briefly down the alley and picked up a couple more Heinekens at a GS25, Korea’s 7-11.  We posted up not far from the Ho Bar where we just were, on a corner, swigging on our beers, and still shooting the shit.  Kevin seemed to have calmed down a bit.  Enjoying the crisp autumn air, whatever storm was tormenting him downstairs seemed to have passed with the change of scenery.  Speaking of which, is always remarkable. 

Seoul, South Korea

The girls in Korea are stunning.  They walk in heels like militant femme fatale troopers.  They show leg all year long.  In the summertime, it’s daisy dukes, high-waisted, form-fitting shorts, or a coochy-cutter variety hidden strategically beneath a long-sleeved shirt or hoodie, making it look as though they stepped out of the house forgetting to put on pants.  And of course the heels!  Let’s not forget about the heels.  Rarely do you see a Korean girl without them.  If you do, it’s either a school girl, or a cute dressed down girl with sporty running shoes or knock-off Addidas soccer sandals, cute feet sporting cute animated and brightly colored ankle socks.  In the wintertime, you’ll see everything from fur-lined ankle boots, knee-high stiletto leather heels and mini-skirts, attire that Lucy Liu might have worn in Charlie’s Angels, and always lots of skin tight black pantyhose, leggings, etc.  Plenty of slender, fit, Asian gams to gawk at.  We had a good seat for the evenings street fashion show.  Beers in hand we watched the parade of beauties catwalk down the neon-lit alleyway.   Street stalls wafting the appetizing smells of tteokbokki, (떡볶이 - rice pounded glutinous spicy rice cakes that are slathered in a fiery red pepper sauce), which will snap you back to if you have gone over the brink and are swimming in an unfavorable swirling eddy of blood-alcohol.  

Taking poetic observations there on the corner and waxing about the novelty of living and working in Asia as ESL teachers and relishing the first world privilege of being able to take exotic paid vacations around the globe, put us into a pretty good collective mood and put Kevin’s head miles away from his cynical turn downstairs.  But about this time, completely oblivious to most of the women around, immersed in our camaraderie, our collective attention rip-chord was jerked.  We turned an about face towards an outdoor Soju tent (a tented Korean bbq joint) adjacent the alleyway from our Jay and Silent Bob post-up.

Just across on the opposite corner from us sat two elegantly beautiful Korean girls, visibly drunken, yet playful with intent on garnering attention, “From us?” I thought, somewhat incredulously.  They did seem pretty over-the-top with their cute little exaggerated mannerisms, probably sort of slightly smitten that there were two decent looking foreign guys in ear shot who hadn’t yet approached them or even noticed them really.  I convinced myself after a few more minutes of watching their cute banter and slightly over-performative-theatrics; that they seemed to be, beyond a reasonable drunken doubt, setting a pretty big target for us there, creating an easy way for us to approach and initiate.  So, resolved in that special way you get while deep into an evening of spirits, I waited for one of them to make eyes with me and when she did, I gave a soft and subtle yet knowing smile, and charmingly nodded my head and gesticulated a “you want me to take a picture of you two?”  She coyly responded with a smile, giving a cute nervous laugh, head nodding yes.  Her friend noticed the brief telepathic reaction, saw me approaching and giggled in a way that Korean women sometimes do, covering her mouth with a groomed conservative demeanor that only Asian women seem to possess, that, at first appears childish yet on further inspection, is also extremely sexy and endearing, especially when you realize what jealous rages, kimchi tempers, and fiery attitudes in the bedroom that they are capable of.  

As I approached them from across the narrow neon-lit alleyway, Kevin followed behind.  I reached over their table and she handed me the camera phone that the two of them had been taking selfies on for the last 10 minutes.  It was a large touch screen smart-phone, a newer Samsung Galaxy model, too big to fit in a man’s pocket.  I took it, stepped back a pace and a half and snapped a photo of them.  No big deal.  I counted to three, using my best Korean, “Hanna, Deul, Set.” snap.  Coy yet eager to see the result, the phone’s owner reached in towards me, grabbed the phone, turning the screen towards her to get a better look.  She wasn’t pleased.  She demanded that I take another shot, saying, in cute broken English, “it not good.”  Their demeanor's still flirty, eager to stretch out Act One a few more verses.  So, obliging, I stepped back and took a few more shots. After taking a series of about three shots, I still didn’t receive their approval.  So, now being a little more charming, playful and engaged, I took the phone back for a third round of shots.  This time I knelt down and sort of took a couple of more artsy angles from a down up view and to the side. 

Well, as I was there on one knee propositioning a third round of playful photos from the girls, I sensed a presence approaching rather quickly to the side of the their table down the alleyway to my 3 o’clock.  And before I could get my head fully around to ascertain the sudden aggressive movement, a strong arm swung at me and smacked the phone from my hands, knocking it violently from my grip.  A Korean kid, a little younger than me, built sturdy but not menacingly beyond my means to confront confidently, is staring down at me from above as I’m there on one knee.  In a rapid fire succession of immediacy, my drunken, second-language improvisational intuition using pigeon Korean, yielded something like. . . 

“Mianhamneeda.  Nogah yuhjah-cheengo. 

Algeutsumneeda.  Woori kasaeyo.  Mianhamneeda.” 

("I’m so sorry.  That’s your girlfriend.  

We understand.  We’re going.  I’m sorry.") 

Yet, my honorific use of his language didn’t deter his belligerence.  It was here that I stood, and hands in the air, holding to a posture of non-confrontation, not staring him in the eyes, and turning to walk away, asserting yet again my initial apology, that he, with absolute incisive Soju-face aggression, plants a strong forearm across the full width of my chest, landing it with as much pure force as he could muster.  He knocked me back with a stupid assertiveness.  Crossing any decency and completely disregarding my gracious attempt at civil diplomacy, my anger mounted in a fury of self-righteous indignation.  Adrenalin surge dropping  a usually sleeping alpha male psychology from neutral into 1^st gear.  Jaw tightened. Face flush.  Heart pumping blood in a rapid flood of frenzy; recruiting pulsing muscles with instant oxygenation.  Capillaries restricted.    Chest out.  Eyes seeing red hot rage.  With a commanding posture, speaking English now, in a deeper more authoritative tone, I tell him we are leaving and that we are sorry.  Yet the Soju-faced belligerence of this little Korean man was not to be thwarted.  He popped me again with the same force and in the same dismissive manner as he did the first blow.  And while striking me, said something about Korean women and Korean being number one.

“Hangookin ill-bahn!  

Waygookin erahng Hangook yuhjah ahn-day!” 

("Korea is number one!
Foreigners and Korean women, I don't like it!")

I saw red.  I remember in a flash of absolute maddening flurry, time perception beginning to blur, saying, “You wanna fuck with me, you stupid motherfucker?!” and grabbing him by the upper lapel, push-shoving him forward, knocking him off balance so quickly and explosively, while simultaneously sweeping his feet.  Using his momentum against him, I heaved his drunken hostile body to the pavement in one blindingly explosive, fluid, Judo throw.  Kevin remarked to me later, that he couldn’t believe the velocity to which this man’s body hit the ground, and the sound to which his head made careening limply off the blacktop, making a loud dense smack.  I repeated my initial profanity laced outburst in an aggressive manner while in a sort of mounted position over him.  Unfortunately, in a drunken state, and full of adrenalin and rage, one doesn’t often utter the wittiest of lines.  I’d take liberties here and exaggerate my eloquence but I’ll spare you the Hollywood rendition of the encounter.  It was a stupid street fight - just two drunken stags locking horns over a couple of doe’s – but there I was – in the most common and idiotic of situations.  It felt surreal. 

While on top of him, still a hold of his upper lapel, I picked his shoulders up off the ground again, without much memorable resistance, shook him and planted him back down firmly into his nest of submission on the pavement.  During this mounting session somehow the girls whom I was just carrying on with, making eyes with, and flirting with, completed an absolute about face.  They came up from behind, slapping, clawing and grabbing at my clothes, assisting their fellow countryman, trying in vain to pull off the foreign aggressor, yet only succeeding in ripping each of the buttons clean down the front of my favorite shirt.  Still in a position of dominance, despite the maylay, I got up, ripped shirt showing a hairy (yet athletic and well-formed) Sean Connery chest beneath a stylish sports blazer and say, 

“We’re FUCKin LEAving dude!” 

It was here that a quick glance down the alleyway and to the sides of the gogee restaurant and outdoor seating joints that I notice a solid contingent of spectators and stragglers beginning to collect.  Their interested eyes show nothing but looks of “what did the foreigner do wrong?”  Before I could get more than a good 5 steps down the street from this Korean racist raggedy-Anne whom I had so thoroughly just embarrassed in front of his coveted countrywomen, that he somehow managed to get up and head me off.  Assuming a position of, what appeared to be some sort of martial arts inspired stance, he blocks my exit from the narrow alley.  In the “land of the morning calm”, there is no shortage of Korean d-bags that have studied taekwondo, otherwise known as the most useless of martial arts to any man outside of Korea.  Anyone who has seen an MMA fight knows this much to be true and painfully self-evident.  Allegedly, it was concocted by retarded twats during the Goryeo dynasty (13^th century) to enable the Korean foot soldiers to kick Ghengis Khan’s invading legions of horsemen from their steeds during battle.  History tells us how that ended.  Yet despite the historical futility of the asinine art-form, most Korean men think that they can fight because at age 15 they were awarded the top belt from one of a myriad of private academies that their parents sent them to, which only really serve as surrogate afterschool babysitters. They are equally as ubiquitous as Korean corner stores and about as rigorous as an annual physical by a blind doctor. 

So, there I found myself.  In the middle of a neon-lit alleyway in Seoul, South Korea surrounded by nationals and about to fight a belligerent Soju-faced raging Asian bull of a man.  We squared up with hands at attention, ready for the other to make the first move.  While toe to toe, I briefly laughed audibly and incredulously to myself at the absurdity of my predicament, just before leading with a left jab, to which I catch my Soju-faced sparring partner square in the nose with.  His head snapped back quickly as my hand touched off the square of his face, making a sound that resembled a clap track for an old Kung-fu movie.  Stunned, he came in hands dropped, after me, but I caught him with another before he could find his wits - a big right hook on the side of his head.  Before I could get another to his head, I was taken off balance blindly by another dude that came in to help the obviously disadvantaged taekwondo master.  Grabbing me from behind, and holding my arms back, I was drug-pulled from my opponent.  “Where was Kevin?” I thought, before being thrown to the ground in a tangled mess of a pig pile.  It was 4 against one at this point.  The tag team had me down and the girls came in from the perch on the sidelines.  No one was able to land anything worthwhile but I was caught with a flailing feminine limb which somehow found its direction in the may-lay, and caught me in a back-handed fashion hard in the face, drawing a dribble of blood from my nose.  

Down on the ground and growing tired with the sheer amount of energy needed to move 4 bodies around in such a manner to avoid the more precarious submissive positions, I glance up and notice the looks in the eyes of the men on the fringes.  The looks were all cold - bereft of empathy or concern for my predicament.  It was here that I gave one last heave of a Hulk-esque throwback and lifted my tangled legs and limbs from the back-alley Twister match and began walking at a steady clip backwards, facing the attackers:  One block. Two blocks.  Soju-face was still down on the count but his silent side-kick countryman was up, as were the two Jeckyl-n-Hyde Korean dames, and were still avidly pursuing me.  Kevin, still somehow miraculously with me, turns and says,

“Dude, this is fucked.  We’re fucked.  
Cops come, we’re going home man.  
They’ll extradite us no question.  

Fuck this.  Take off dude.  I am.”

And with that, bolts down an alleyway at a ferocious sprint.  But I, still somehow sporting too much pride for another half block, begin only a slow retreat.  Back peddling, still responding to the girls now shouting, “Hey, stop!” at me, more eager to recruit negative attention from the onlookers than actually getting me to stop, my pride began to waver and my options became clear:  Run.  I finally yielded to a jog and then slowly and begrudgingly to a sprint.  Not quite out of the neon-lit village, I peak back to gauge the distance created between me and my hot pursuit and notice that the Korean dames are actually out front now and in an all out sprint, galloping in heels like James Bond villains.  Not far behind was Soju-face and his trusty xenophobic sidekick. 

As I reached the main thoroughfare, I hesitate a half-second at full Usain-Bolt-speed to assess the imminent pedestrian death by taxi collision, before I enter a Seoul thoroughfare 10 lanes wide, crisscrossing a dense bottleneck of honking orange metered taxis, not even sure if it was possible to breach to the opposite side.  Still at 400 meter-dash speed, and bobbing and weaving through heavy traffic like an athletic fullback through a line of scrimmage, I have my second ill-timed hearty laugh of the night, prompting a big angelic smile to slowly descend across my face, and I raise my arms out slowly and start to bank left and right as if flying an airplane.  The surreal quality of the situation; here I am in Asia, shirt ripped wide open blowing in the early morning hour autumn frigid air, my white chest broad and visible, as I dodge thick taxi traffic across an impossible 10 lanes of a gridlocked 2 am mess, just made me feel ridiculous enough to elevate the absurdity to a grand new height.  And I think I achieved what I was going for.  As I bounded upon the sidewalk making it acrobatically to the other side of the urban Asian jungle, I noticed that I had finally given the shake to my relentless pursuers.  But unwilling to stop running for fear of a second go or worse; a police encounter, I continued on another 300 meters or so.  Finally stopping after my dry mouth had parched my throat, chest searing, legs like rubber, I knelt down to catch a breadth.