Ralph

1. Back in Ralph
2. Jackpot
3. Graphic design attacks return
4. Chaimberlan is now Chinatown
5. UpperWestSide t-shirts need to get done
6. Double Stuff Oreos
7. The Budos Band
8. this list is going nowhere fast.
   

Final Prep

So. Here I am back in Saigon.

After a few nights in Dalat, we scooted to the coast on a bus towards a place called Muine (Mui`-Nay). Muine was a beach town, one long strip of road and a ton of hotels and places to eat food, rent surfing equipment (of the wind variety) and buy extremely cheesy hats. Vietnamese are crazy for wearing cheesy hats. I just can't bring myself to wearing a hat like that hawaiian punch lush...

Anyway, it was low season in Muine, meaning it was relatively devoid of human life, save for the few backpackers running through to take $300 kitesurfing lessons and 50-70 year-old Aussie couples. Also there were alot of electricity issues. Most of the time if we would get lunch somewhere the waiter would seat us and then dissapear. We would hear a generator begin to roar and then bad music and fans blowing. Muine was relaxing for the most part, but a non-AC room and no nightlife combined with a jellyfish/algae bloom made it significantly less entertaining.

So, it is my last full day in Saigon (where we arrived last night) and I am compiling a list of shit I need to get/do. We'll see if my wallet can handle it....:

1. One liter of Cobra Wine
2. One kilo of Saigon tobacco
3. One carton of Vinataba Cigarettes as promised for one E. Sauvain
4. A large North Face backpack, non-counterfit
5. Assorted family gifts
6. Write 4 letters
7. Aquire 3 more pairs of Ray-Bans
8. Go to Dung's bar tonight so he and the girls can give us a promised send off
9. Get back to North America

Until then.

Jesus H Christ

So, I'm still in Dalat.
Which is going down as one of my favorites.

Yesterday we woke, and after a brief breakfast met our guide Nam, rented another moto and blasted through the countryside. We stopped at an abandoned airstrip and some greenhouses and stuff, and while heading to a waterfall, Nam yells, "You like rice wine?"

For fuck sake man. 10:30 in the AM and we basically stop at a dude's house because he is running the equivalent of a moonshine distillery in his house. He made us (well, me) drink like a triple shot of the nastiest, warmest, most vile rice shit ever.

Ladies and gentleman, we have liftoff.

Rett tasted it, but basically refused anymore. At this point in the morning he was flying solo on the bike and I was Nam's bitch, so I don't blame him. We hopped back on the bikes and did some more riding, checked out some other shit, most notably a massive waterfall, and then stopped in the middle of nowhere for some pho (fuh) for lunch.

Another note on Vietnam: People are really into "medicine", but when I say medicine i'm not meaning stuff that actually good for you. I'm meaning, when we walk into this ladies house for lunch, there are big glass containers with a thick brown liquid and all kinds of shit floating (or sinking) in it. It's not uncommon for it to be full of snakes, scorpions, other assorted animals, herbs, treebarks, probably dirt too.

After a long conversation on the merits of snake liver, and good discussion on how nice snake blood smells, Nam insisted on us having shots of this medicine shite. Thing is, he poured two, not three shots of it. This says alot when the local won't even touch the nasty stuff that he swears by.

All I will say is that he made us have another shot afterwards, apparently my "this is disgusting" face translates in Vietnamese as "damn, I am cured!"

We continued riding, this time I was driving solo, toothpick secured in my teeth and white wayfarers strapped to my face, and secretly praying that the medicine wouldn't put me in Bat Country. After getting back to the hotel I had a beer and talked some more with Nam. He flew helicopters for the South during the war. I took his picture.

Later that night Rett and I did some exploring. A backpacker, the sort who clutches a lonely planet guide while he looks and the ground and kicks grit in the street, told us that Dalat was vacant of late night happening and we wanted to prove the Aussie bastard wrong. By 11pm though, things were looking pretty dim. I wanted to pass out, but Rett man attacked with the positive peer pressure that I was warned of in the DARE program and we went to one more bar.

Like the other ones we had stopped by, it was practically deserted. There was a 46 year old dude from Newcastle though.

Phil had started thinking long and hard about his midlife crisis. Before becoming firmly ensnared in it and cheating on his girlfriend or buying a sportscar, he broke up with the girl, told his manager to fuck off, sold his house and has been traveling all around Asia.

We closed the bar with Phil and then decided to look for more trouble near the city market. Upon arrival it appeared that most of the people were cleaning up their stuff, but we stopped at one stall where there was a table of old Vietnamese guys and ordered three beers. As is usual for me in Asia, after a minute or so I started getting stares from the locals and shouted hello at them. It is really fun to catch people staring at you and make an awful face at them and keep staring.

It started.

"Where you from?" etc. Eventually they were handing us shots across the table of cursid Hanoi Vodka. Hanoi Vodka that is good for sanitizing things, fueling your car, curing ear infections, not drinking. Then they put a huge plate of meat on our table. It was tasty, because I was drunk, but was tough and cartilagey. After a few bites I realize that the one dude is grinning at me, he slurred some Vietnamese and then pointed at his tongue. "Oh, yeah! Delicious! Tastes good!" I said. Then I realized he meant that we were eating tongue, great.

So, 1am finds me quite well. I am sitting in a nearly abandoned street market with a table of 8 drunk Vietnamese men, Rett, a drunken 46 year old Englishman, watching some teenagers smash a kid's head against a steel door, eating cow tongue and drinking more shots of the poison.

I guess it's tradition in Vietnam, they are very nice people and even nicer drunks. If your glass is looking low, they will top it. If your are spacing out, the bastards will shove a shot in your face. This happened until the bottle was empty. Then Rett decided that we should show them up and retaliate. He vanishes for a bit and I try to communicate some more. One guy is a taxi driver, he is drunker and more obnoxious then the other guys, he wants to take me somewhere, presumably a brothel, and keeps making hand gestures that surely represent dirty hooker sex. Great. Another guy across from me is a sculptor. I told him I was a graphic designer. No comprende. I told him I was an artist. This he understood.

Then Rett shows up with another bottle of this Hanoi Vodka shit. The plan was to pour shots for all of these guys, but what happened instead was that for every shot we poured for the old dudes, the three white guys had to have a shot as well.

I think this worked out to maybe a total of 8 to 10 shots for me. Somehow we got home.

So, the moral of this story is...

There is no moral. Motorbikes, bad medicine, Hanoi Vodka and tongue will dehydrate you.

Here I am, typing this shit. I just had breakfast and sat next to a baby all morning.

Space Cadet Sayles ending transmission.

Dalat

I'm in Dalat.

It's fucking awesome (70F), there was no war here, it is mountainous and sweatshirtable, tomorrow I am getting on a motorcycle and driving around the country side.

I have a card reader here!

It only takes 10 minutes to upload a photo.

Fuck

That.

Saigon Says

Hey guys.

Or by guys I mean the three people that consistently check the blog that I never post on.

What a cliche start to any blog ever. Fuck.


Well, Here I am in Saigon. It's been nice here, monsoonal rains and humidity. I stayed in Can Tho last night, which is a chill town on the Mekong. Ate lots of elephant ear fish and woke at 5am this morning to take a boat out to a floating market. The delta is really cool. Each boat sells something different and they each have bamboo poles with the product stuck on top. So, for instance, a long boat overflowing with pineapple will have a big ass stick with a pineapple stuck on it.

It's weird to watch the people, they live their whole lives on boats. I couldn't deal with being damp (dank, lol) my entire life.

At least they eat well.

Couple days in Saigon, then Asshole, Miller and Expo go home and me and Rett-Man go to Dalat and some other undecided places by Jeep. Yay.
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Also.
If you know Jane Wilson you should email her. She starts radiation soon, I don't know many details as I am 13,000 miles away.

Email me for her address.
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Maybe by the end of this trek I will find somewhere with internet that is worth a shit and a nice, hot Australian girl with a camera cord.

Until then, imagine.