Nha Trang and Dalat, Vietnam

I met back up with Alec The Dogeating German in Nha Trang. He had seen enough rain and was headed for the west coast. He had a guy attached to his hip, a Brit who seemed like a total douchebag. We had a sidebar when the guy went to the bathroom.

"Alec, why are you hanging out with a douchebag?"

"I know. He's totally like douche".

"Then why?"

"I got lonely"

I can understand this. I have had a few drinks with DB's just to kill some time. They almost always tell me about how corrupt America is within the first five minutes. I have taken to chumming their water, creating an entirely false self. I claim to be Republican, pro-Iraq and from an oil family. They go fucking beserk.

"Alec, how do we ditch this guy?"

"So simple. Just leave"

And just like that, we were out the door. We never saw him again. I like to imagine that he was excited to have met Alec and was destroyed that we had bailed on him. This was probably better for him than hearing my sermon about sending more weapons to the Saudis so that we could control more oil.

We had an amazing night. We found a seafood cart by the water, pointed at two huge lobsters and watched them grilled live on the curbside hibachi. We ripped them apart with our hands, sitting at a kiddy table and chairs. Lots of Tiger beer. It was like a shellfish tea party for two. Grand total: $7. We barhopped after this, finally settling on The Sailing Club for jugs of vodka orange. Alec had peeped my Facebook and asked why I didn't mention that I was gay. Unsure of how to respond, I went with "don't tell me you want me to suck your dick now". He laughed until he couldn't breathe. Then we drank too much and walked home, mindful of the packs of roving girls (big scam here. the group of them pretend to flirt and embrace you while fleecing your pockets). Alec was annoyed that my goodbye hug was too mindful of his heterosexuality and demanded a second one "for real". We said goodbye and good luck. Good Ol Alec The Dogeating German.

The next two days in Nha Trang were mostly a waste. It rained. All of the boats stayed in harbor and people did cultural things like watch Blades of Glory. I managed to take a taxi to the hot spring and sat for 20 minutes in a hot mud bath. Big whoop. Tips: stay at the Ha Van Hotel, drink the Bellinis at Guava and get a lifechanging massage the place that begins with an "s". Oh, and go to Nha Trang when it's sunny.

The ride to Dalat was just past hazardous and just before terrifying. Huge mountains. Oncoming buses. Roads more narrow than Bleeker Street or Brick Lane Road. Seven Hours. Thank god for my Coast To Coast podcasts, which never fail to distract me with thoughts of UFO's and Atlantis.

Dalat is a town in the mountains, originally built by the French. It is centered around a lake and has the freshest air in Vietnam. I found the Dreams Hotel and haggled a room down to $15, then went for food. I met a French Canadian named Julie (joo-lee) there; she would play an interesting part in my evening, which is best described in another entry. Not like that.

The Easy Riders were once a group of motorbike guides who began running mountain tours from Dalat a few years ago. Like everything successful in Vietnam, it was copied a thousandfold. The town is now over-run with knuckleheads on bikes, goading you for a ride. They haunt the cafe's, the bars and even the hotels. If you stop to look at a map or admire the lake, there is one on your shoulder in under a minute. I beg the town of Dalat to do something about them because they have ruined a beautiful place to visit. It's worse than any kind of touting because they usually engage in conversation first. "How are you? Where you from. Where you go next?". Then you wait for it. "So you want easy rider?" A "no" turns into two more minutes of pitch, quieted only after two more "no's" and one "NO". I am not lying when I say that this happened to me forty times a day, even when I had my headphones on and hoodie up. Imagine not being able to relax in a lake town. I cut my trip short to two nights. Fuck the Easy Riders.

Off to Saigon on a seven hour bus ride. Completely unsure of what to expect.

Notes From Vietnam

There is this squatting thing that people do in this part of the world. Usually the person is steeped on a curb, feet on the edge, chilling the hell out. There is no muscle quiver, spasm or give. They can squat like this for hours. I see hundreds of people a day like this. Not impressed? Go ahead - try it. Stand in the middle of your room and squat, keeping your ass about one inch from the ground. Try it for ten minutes. Imagine staying like this for an hour. Then call Jenny Craig.

This is just one of a thousand differences I have found between Vietnam and America. There are no spinning classes or McDonalds or air conditioner repair shops. There are no public libraries or subways or Doppler weather forecasts. No gutters, barristas or professional clowns. Jobs that Westerners have created still serve no function here. I spent the better part of fifteen minutes trying to explain what a Dog Catcher was to a semi-English-speaking waitress who was fascinated with The American Way. "But why you want catch dog? Dog go when he ready."

In fact, the only universal thread I can seem to find (other than soccer) is video games. Internet stores are jammed from 4-6pm with kids desperate for an hour of dance simulation or first person murder. Video games. It seems that the only way to world communication maybe be between an online bullet battle between Nguyen in Sapa and Michael in Fort Wayne.

The most important job in Vietnam is not President or Oil Tycoon. It is Cook or Motorbike Repair Man. The jobs that are given value are the ones which actually keep society functioning. Bus Driver is high on the pyramid. Not only is this the main form of long-haul transport but it is an incredible challenge, given that the highways here are really just byways. You can count the number of daily domestic flights on two people's hands. You couldn't count the number of buses. Period.

Here are some things I have seen on my bus ride today: A family of four on one motorbike with a tarp over their heads (rainshower). Cows in the front yard of a one bedroom house. An overturned motorbike with a crowd and a body on the ground. A fifty year old crane pulling a piece of bridge into the air with what looked like silly string. A monkey in a cage. A wedding in a field. Foggy roads that go into the sky and come out the other side of heaven. This ain't even close to Kansas.

Vietnam gets a bad rap on the Southeast Asia travel circuit and it probably deserves it. There seems to be quite a bit of crime committed against tourists here - crime that the people would not commit on their own (mostly because it is not as lucrative). Drive-by pickpocketing is prevalent in Nha Trang, especially at night when the bars let out. Hanoi is scam city, with taxi drivers pulling shit that I have never even heard of before (and I once had a NYC cab driver jerk off while looking at me in the rear view mirror). The constant deluge of potential grubbing can get you down some days, especially if other travelers' stories begin to stack up.

The thing is, you just can't feel the hand of government here. There is not enough paper to push. Perhaps this why the country lags between so many social structures. Ho Chi Minh is revered everywhere as a communist who united the people against the French and Japanese. Yet capitalism is everywhere - it is just a matter of time before the Starbucks and Gaps come to town. It's this confusion that makes the government seem invisible. With no desperate need to show The Vietnamese Way as The Right Way, it is left to quietly do the basics of what government needs to do. Like build bridges, build schools and get the people through to next year.

Overall, enough is more. Chess on the ground suits most people in the evening. There is no dying wish for a trip to The Mall or a $200 bar bill at Chateau Marmont. Why? Because it would not even occur to the people as an option. The American Dream has become getting fired and paid out, in order to start a new life (where eventually we will long to be fired again). The Vietnamese dream, at least for now, continues to be just getting through one life, not three.

Some days I look around and try to comprehend that I am here. Right now I am only 50km from jungle that is laced with undetonated mines and fields that have still not recovered from napalm. I wonder how unearthly a place this was to fight a war and then wonder again if a desert is much better. I see orphaned kids with deformities and yet healthy kids with school uniforms and backpacks. The West is creeping into this country but from where I stand it still feels foreign and remote.

If I was a 'real' travel writer I would be trying to find a way to thread all of this together. Maybe some kind of Carrie Bradshaw voiceover that ties it all together. But this country isn't simply sewn up. Vietnam is teetering on the edge of two millenniums and I am lucky enough to be right here in the middle, at a cafe in Dalat.

Eating pizza.

Halong Bay, Vietnam

The three day trip to Halong was very cool, even though the weather was overcast and cold.

Day one was on a Junk Boat, which we headed to after a three hour bus ride. There are 500 of these boats trying to pull out of the harbor at the same time and it was chaos. I was not sure what to expect for $90 (booked out of Hanoi Backpacker) but it was a sweet setup, with rooms nicer than most hotels I have stayed at on this trip. There was a mish-mosh of fellow travellers - an older British couple, Australian girls (always), a 20 year old danish couple, an english engineer who had just quit his job and various others.

We spent most of the day cruising for caves. They are astounding. You can walk for an hour in some. Eventually they dump you back to the water, where women in rowboats try to sell you supplies. These little floating bodegas seem to be everywhere on the bay and the women are, shall we say, insistent. "YOU BUY OREO! YOU NEED OREO". They seemed genuinely shocked when I actually purchased Oreos because hey, I really did need Oreos.

There are different kinds of party nights in this world. There are the ones where you spend eight hours at a club, main-lining vodka redbulls and avoiding drunk girls with cigarettes. And then there are the ones where you drink a liter of Johnny Walker and do karaoke on a boat with strangers. Take a guess. Everyone bought a bottle and was drunk by nine, swapping stories in the main cabin.

Our hosts started the karaoke. I am not a fan of singing but scotch turns me into another person. Pretty soon the whole boat was singing the Grease megamix. The other boats floating around us had the same idea - anyone with ears could hear the echoes of "Kharma Chameleon" and "I've Got You Babe". It was an early night. Everyone was passed-out drunk by ten thirty, dreaming of a Loverboy hit.

Most people ended their trip here but I pressed on to Cat Ba Island with the older Brit couple. Our guide Hung took us off the map with an unadvertised visit to a cave in the middle of nowhere. It was discovered in 2006 and was only reachable by two longboats through calm, beautiful water. A man's body had been found when the place was discovered and the bones dated back 1,000 years. Imagine walking through a city block's worth of caves with only a flashlight and three other people. In the middle of fucking NOWHERE.

The Brits stayed in a fancy hotel. I shacked at a cool 3 star facing a bay full of fishing boats. After dinner Hung knocked on my door and told me to get my ass in gear - we were going out. But, ya know, in Vietnamese. He took me to a bar down an alley, owned by his friend and frequented by the other guides. These guys were insanely cool and suprise partiers. Several of them had never tried tequila and that was all that I needed to hear. Our (severely) broken english conversations ranged from the meritts of handjobs to the economy of southeast asia. Hung guided us home, although I am not sure how. I recall something about singing "New York, New York" at the top of my lungs.

We journeyed back to Hanoi the next day. I couldn't sell Hung out as a party animal and let him tourguide us back, although we exchanged some boozy glances. I also began calling him Hung Over, which only amused me. Back in Hanoi I checked into my own room at The Ritz Hotel for a cool $22. I plugged my dvd player into the tv and marathoned bootleg movies for the better part of 24 hours.

And now, off to Nha Trang via airplane. Meeting back up with Alec The Dogeating German.

The Underdog

I wasn't even thinking of eating dog until I met Alec. He has a way of smiling and raising his eyebrows that suggests trouble, but the kind of trouble that you just have to get into.

Alec is German - the first German that I have ever liked. He could be my boyfriend if he didn't have a girlfriend. He giggles at my unspoken jokes (a nod at a kid picking his nose, for example) and speaks excellent English. Alec is also insanely hot, a triathalete who still drinks enough beer to not be featherweight but enough muscle to have a tight, convext chest. Swoon.

During our first drink, he told me about the time on when he cheated on his girlfriend back home. It had been after a long bus ride through Laos, during which a beautiful girl had suggested that they seek accomodation at the same guest house. He aquiesced. After dinner they had some drinks and headed to her room. Just before they started making out he felt a bit sick but his hormones got the best of him and he forged ahead. Halfway through the act, with her on top, he began having severe gastric pains. She thought it was him getting more turned on and thrashed harder and faster, which made him offer a clenched whimper. She interpreted the whimper as ecstasy and rode even harder. At that point, Alec said, "I shit on bed a little but she never know". This made him my best friend for life.

"You know. We should go for dog".

We were out drinking whiskey at four in the afternoon when he offered it up, straight from the 'ol Lonely Planet. I could only hear Anthony Bourdain whispering in my ear not to be a wimp, not to be the safe American consumer. So, I agreed to eat man's best friend. Alec was thrilled. I was thrilled to thrill him.

We continued the evening by drinking free beer on the roof of our hostel, the well-run, Australian-owned Hanoi Backpackers. Alec looked at me and tried to speak code as we batted off two frumpy Polish girls who would not stop hitting on us. Had it been a frumpy Polish guy, I may have considered a bit more discussion.

Alec. Giving me the accent. "Time for D-O-G now?"

Certainly.

We hailed a taxi and took a drive to a decidedly sketchy neighborhood, at which point the cab driver continued and took us five miles further to an even sketchier one. It's a universal rule that no good comes of establishments near an airport. There were no people, no cabs, no stores and no cyclos. Only a semi-fancy shack with ten tables and no customers. "Dog! " Said our driver. "Woof Woof".

The anxiety of eating Lassie was quadrupled by the apalling neighborhood and certainty that we would never get home. That feeling went through the ceiling when we realized that there were about ten canines wandering below the eatery. The reality that dog came from DOG was almost too much. Tony Bourdain kept whispering in my brain, cooing me closer to the tables. Before I knew it, my shoes were off and I was sitting at a Japanese style table on the floor. It bears repeating that Alec and I were the only customers.

Two men served as our cooks and waiters. They looked like mechanics more than restauranteurs. Between the two of them, they knew three words and gracefully laid out the dining options. "Boy Dog? Girl Dog?". We shrugged our shoulders and told them to pick what they wanted. Not understanding a word of what we said, they moved quickly towards the back. Chef's Special it was. I worked in a rib joint once and it is best that the customer never knows what really happens behind the door that swings both ways. I shuddered to think.

Dinner arrived before we could even think about bailing out. Two small plates of grilled dog were placed in front of us, with three equally mysterious dipping sauces. The meat was brown and rump-like, chunked and sliced. The smell coming off of it made me momentarily gag. I proceeded to momentarily gag four more times.

There was no backing down, as our two hosts were now watching to make sure we partook. I grabbed my chopsticks and shoved a piece in my mouth before I really had time to process what I had in front of me.

Dog was a completely new and distinct taste to me. It had never struck me that at my age I might discover a new taste. It was like the first time I tasted licorice or lemongrass or coriander. Except more horrible than anything I had ever eaten in my life. Years of Liver Night as a kid had taught me how to convincingly fake-eat with a quick napkin spit, which is exactly what I did. Unlike in my childhood, the dogs under this table would probably not appreciate my palmed scraps.

"Boy Dog", said our waiter as Alec took a bite from the same stinking pile. Some people turn green - he turned neon. Our waiter departed and he hacked out his bite into a napkin.

Of course we should have stopped right there but we didn't. Neither one of us was leaving until we successfully downed one piece. We both went for the other sliced pile and I guess that I can compare female dog as something pork-like. It was only half as bad as the first pile, which was ten times worse than anything I have ever had. We swallowed. Dog had been ingested. We pounded our orange sodas and looked at each other with grim faces.

There was no pride in the achievement. We were just two dumb guys doing something for the sake of saying that we did it. Neither one of us enjoyed a single second of the experience and neither one of us felt good about what we had done. We had psyched ourselves into doing something because it felt adventurous and non-tourista. It was a horrible mistake and a nasty decision.

We paid quickly and left as if it was a brothel, grabbing the first cab back to the city. It charged us three times the going rate and neither one of us cared. We just wanted that behind us. We deserved to be ripped off.

Hanoi (tourism and masturbation)

A man driving a motorbike with 50 crates of eggs stacked in every inconceivable direction. Another driving an identicle bike with two (live) upsidedown pigs strapped on the back. Blinding numbers of bicycles and taxis. Streets that change names every block. Hotels that appropriate the names of other popular hotels and kick back money to taxi drivers who take unsuspecting tourists their way. Horns. Constant horns. People cooking on the sidewalk. People doing tai-chi on the sidewalk. People screaming on the sidewalk. Women balancing pounds of fruit like Atlas in a produce department. Horns! Absolute, unfettered, constant mayhem.

I love hanoi.

I have spent three nights here and really enjoyed every second. There's a rhythm that this city has and I can dance to it. I can cross the street while 50 motorbikes are driving, all hellbent on plowing through whatever stands in their way. I know this game.

While here, I made a few stops on the tourist trail. First was Hoa Lo Prison Museum, which is a heavy place. There is a dirth of death in these walls and if anyplace is haunted, this is it. Used first by the French to imprison the Vietnamese, it was later used to hold American pilots who were shot down while bombing Hanoi (including John McCain). Walking through the rows of tiny cells gave me the shivers. As did some of the tortue and murder devices, like a guillotine and iron gloves. This building was misery, disease and death for the people who stayed here in the 20's. The thing is, the pictures of American prisoners don't make it seem nearly as rough. Prison is prison, but snaps of GI's playing volleyball and decorating for Christmas pale in comparison to some of the images of decades before. It seemed more like a holding place than anything else...maybe why it was nicknamed the Hanoi Hilton. Of course, the folks of North Vietnam probably had some uglier pictures of the 70's that aren't prominently displayed...

The Temple of Literature should be re-named The Temple of Wasted Time. This seems to be where tourists go to be pushy, talk on their cell phones and let their children scream. Lonely Planet can suck me. This place looks more like a knockoff setting for Kill Bill than it does something historic and jawdropping. It's like getting to Disney World and realizing that there are no other rides besides It's A Small World.

Last night I did a really stupid thing and jerked off in the middle of the night. It had been five nights and I woke up at 2am riding my dorm bunk like I was in The Preakness. The other nine people in my room all appeared to be sleeping and I did my best to use my comforter like Harry Potter's invisibility cloak. The hangup was that I couldn't sprint to the finish, for fear of rocking the bed. That last ten seconds is a bitch in four wheel drive. After ages I finally committed to my endgame fantasy, which revolved around the guy from the Singapore bridge in the missionary position.

One can forget just how much fluid can come from one's body at a moment like this. I immediately wished that I had not done it. In fact, in the middle of spewing I was having to organize a cleanup plan. This was not a daily wank - the Nile
Delta was emptying into the top bunk of room four, with nine other people dreaming about fairies and spiders around me. "Gnwweaaa" was as close to a moan as I could utter. All of this needed to happen under the covers and everything went everywhere, with tributaries draining out of my midsection. I had no socks for mopping and could not get up, so I took the route a tenth grader would take. I just wiped it all over the side of the bed and fell asleep.

Much of my time here alternated between drinking and walking, with some delecious vietnamese meals inbetween. I ate on posh roofdecks but I also ate squatting on street corners, slurping whatever the locals fed me for $.50. It's a great city to wander for hours. I ended up completely lost two times, which was easily solved by jumping on the back of someone's motorbike for 10,000 Dong. You can blend into the madness here if you have the technique, even if you are a foot taller than everyone else.

Not much more to report. I am off to Halong Bay for a cruise + island trip. More soon.

Cameron Highlands, Malaysia

Tanah Ratah is a particularly ugly town in an extraordinarily beautiful setting. It sits smack-dab in the middle of the Cameron Highlands, a crisp and cool area of Malaysia that supplies enough tea for the whole country. The tea plantations are mostly owned by a Scottish family, who have made a killing by hiring locals at .20r per kilo of tea picked. The place has a laid back feel, and not in a hippy-mystical sort of way. Eyesores like the abandoned development in the center of town are forgotten when you look look at the hills, while sipping a cup of tea or eating a local strawberry.

My first accomodation choices were booked and I randomly found Papillion, a small guesthouse set back a superhero's stone throw from town. The owners are about the nicest people you will ever meet and my room was perfect, with the added indulgence of a hot shower. They are renovating the small hotel next door and it's only a matter of time before the Lonely Planet travellers start filing into this secret little spot.

Tanah Ratah also seems to be the perfect example of how different a people the Malay are. I was ignorant to the fact that there are vitally different races who inhabit this country and somehow manage to do it peacefully. The predominant split is between the chinese and islamic factions, who seem to talk about each other behind closed doors, yet smile in public. I rode by an apartment for let with a sign prominantly displayed that said "for chinese only" at the bottom. Food stalls next to each other waft a conflicting mix of curry and stirfry, each delicious in a different way. There is the attempt to present this culture as "Malaysian" but it has been obvious through my travels that there is no such thing, only symbiotic factions who live in the same place. Yet there is no hint of upheaval or conflict, as with many countries in the same situation.

Truth be told, sightseeing here is littered with tourist traps, all trying to sell you what is displayed on the tour. There are strawberries at farms, tea at plantations, honey from hives. I spent one day touring them all and that was plenty. The real treaure here lays in the nooks and crannies, with the locals who are nice to people even if they are from the country that needlessly starts wars.

The shining example of the vibe here is at T Cafe, where I ate every day. The owner's six year old serves as hostess during the afternoon, ushering me to a seat in a way that almost makes me interested in having kids. "You sit, you eat, you love!". And love I did, trying almost every excellent thing on the menu. Postcards line the room from people who became as sucked into this 10-table restaurant as I was. I've never had service that felt as genuine before and the owner is greatly flattered when you return for the third time, almost to the point of being embarrassed. Her look says "but we really don't do anything THAT special here". They do.

I spent my mornings playing with Max The Puppy and my nights tossing wood on the bonfire at Daniel's Guesthouse, where a dozen backpackers gather each night to swap stories. The nights here are chilly and I stayed close to the fire, even when the wind changed direction and blew smoke in my face. Each morning I woke up smelling a bit like a fireplace.

I had one noteable encounter while in town, writing at a corner bar. A 20-something guy ripped me out of my writing trance, asking me if he could sit down and have a beer. I had the sense that I was being hit on and I was right. Ryan, a Fillipino living here for two years, studied hotel management back home. He pointedly asked me if I like boys or girls and I coughed up the boy answer, outing myself to the only gay for miles. He said that he had been watching me for two days and I heard a tone in his voice that concerned me - absolute loneliness. It became quickly apparent that Ryan was desperate to fall for someone. It had been two years since he had sex in this largely Islamic town and several since he had a magical kiss. I began to catch a tone that unsettled me, the "take me away from here" thing that I have encountered before in other small towns. Ryan had been daydreaming about me and I think he had swept himself up into a fantasy that I was The One, or at least A One. I created a story about a boyfriend back home, in order to sidestep a dream-crushing. His face fell but he continued to work me over, offering that he found white guys "delicious". I coudnt break it to him that I found white guys delicious too and had no urgings for men of the asian variety. Better to let him think that Mike The Banker was the reason for my below-the-belt indifference. We had a couple of beers and I left before his smalltown sadness could seep into the pleasant buzz that this town was giving me. Anyone looking for a nice Flip guy, just park yourself at the corner bar here and make yourself known. Also, they are probably lying about there being no tap beer, so that they can nab an extra two ringit for a bottle. Raise an eyebrow and you'll get your pint.

I am sitting in the yard, writing this with In Rainbows on my headphones and Max chewing on the lace of my shoe. Three nights in Tanah Ratah has been just right. Tomorrow I head back to KL, where I have bid myself a luxury hotel (on priceline for dirt cheap). It may be another solo Valentine's Day but at least I will be wiping my semen on sheets with a thread count over 100.

Taman Negara Rainforest

My guide kept reminding me not to touch hanging branches because of wipers. I had no idea what he was talking about...his accent was rough. Imagine talking to a Bostonian about cars and heart attacks. Then it processed. Vipers. I needed to be careful of vipers.

Welcome to Tamen Negara rainforest in Malaysia, where the death potential goes thermo. I came here on a cheapo package tour, which I purchased at 6:45am in KL. I would never have found the counter in Chinatown had it not been for the one-armed deskclerk, who happily abandoned his post to walk me there for a fivespot. It wasn't until he offerred his good arm that I realized some fingers were missing there too.

The trip to TN is an adventure in and of itself. The three hour bus ride is enough - the driver climbs mile-high hills in first gear, only to barrel down the other side at 120k. This is followed by a 3 hour boat ride up-river. The boat is made with popsicle sticks and chewing gum. The engine seems to operate on the same principles as most blenders, although it never gets beyond Purree.

I picked up accomplices on the bus ride up, two english guys. We hated the canadian girl in our group. She made unprovoked remarks about America and ever since I have been telling her that I voted for Bush and wrote my Congessman to invade Iran next. Which is a fun way to wind someone up even if you are a Democrat who protested the war. I wanted to kick this girl in the vagina.

Kuala Tahan is the only blip on the river's map and is one-stop for Temen Negara adventures. Most of the town (three restaurants and a store) are built on the river and float - a good wake can make dinner turbulent. I am given a tasty little chalet at Ekoten, which is up an flight of vertical stairs, just one stop before heaven. The people who handle the whole trip (Han Travel) are very nice and have their shit together in a big way.

Night One began with an after-dark trek in the jungle. The eight of us headed out into no-man's-land with our guide and flashlights. Over the next two hours we saw everything from stick insects to glowing mushrooms to black scorpions to bird-eating spiders (yep, they are really called that, and they're as big as your hand). The rainforest is loud, with the sound of a million insects buzzing at once. It is also the annual hatching week for chickaras (pictured), which are divebombing insects with a wingspan measured in inches - they scream like the zombies in 28 Days Later. Thousands of them fall from the sky. The Brits were squeeling like little girls.

The second day was action packed. First stop was a walk in the rainforest canopy, courtesy of a series of questionably constructed bridges, hanging 50 meters above God's Green Earth. Scary but incredible. We hiked a mountain next and this left everyone sopping in sweat - it was exactly the kind of workout that people pay a personal trainer hundreds for back home.

Next we visited a local tribe, only one of two that are allowed to live in the rainforest. I was worried that it would feel too Epcot but it ended up being quite cool. These people were the real deal. The tribes are nomadic (they must move every time somebody dies) and this assures that where they live has what might be called a "rural feel". We were shown how to make darts, dip them in poison and shoot them out of bamboo. My shot missed the mark by an inch, which is a legendery first shot for a white man from a big city. The chief jokingly suggested that I might like to move in - I was not sure how explain that Tivo is waiting for me back home.

I am pretty fascinated with the hunting though. The men hunt monkeys mostly. They shoot darts thirty meters into the canopy and nail the little fuckers, who run away after being iced. It takes three minutes for the poison to kill them, at which point they fall from the sky. The poison will spread through the monkey if the injured limb is not immediately hacked off. The things you learn...

The day ended with a boat trip upriver. We all got drenched in the rapids. Everyone went for a swim, except The Japanese people who just plashed each other and giggled like Japanese people. I have long since stopped trying to figure out the Hello Kitty nation.

I am writing this from my second night on a floating restaurant, where tonight I decided to splurge and not eat a rice/fish/"chicken" based dish. I will later make an attempt to cross the river. This side of the river is dry (Islam, etc) and I would fuck a woman for a beer right now. Word around town is that someone is selling contraband Carlsberg for 10 Ringits each but I can't bring myself to pay that. Surreal given that I'll pay $10 for a beer back home.

Cameron Highlands next and Vietnam around the corner.

Singapore Sling

I am at Hooters in Singapore, which is the "first in Asia". It is Hooty Hour, according to the girl with orange shorts up to where her hymen used to be. They serve a dish called the Lover's Knot, which is chicken with mushrooms (and apparently has nothing to do with knots or lovers. Genius marketing). They are playing "Strawberry Fields" on the house system and have mispelled a drink on the menu, "Lover's Portion". It does not get any weirder but they do have Heinz ketchup and mozzerella sticks, so I could definitely live here. I could, however, deal without the tits. Today I also saw my first Taco Bell in five weeks. It was like seeing a unicorn.

Two days ago I broke down and visited a gay sauna. A month without anything but a prostrate massage led me to desperate measures. I paid my "membership fee", buzzed through a windowless door and was given a locker. I am not a sauna kinda guy and this was only the second time that I really remember visiting one. There had been jaunts to one place it Toronto during my ecstasy phase, but that was because it was the only dark place to come down at 7am on a Monday morning. I was clearly not keeping a blog in those days.

For sauna newbies, the game is pretty simple. Take off your clothes (save a towel), turn left at the dusty weight room and enter a dimly lit labyrinth of sin. To be honest, I was not looking for nookie and just searching for something that felt dirty, even if it was just the vibe in the air. The porn chip in my brain needs to connect to something regularly or I will just start jerking off in a Mcdonald's without even knowing it.

Unfortunately I forgot that the place would be filled with asians, who greatly resemble tiny aliens inside a maze with poor light. I ran from their clutches, desperately trying to find someone over the four foot mark.

So this is where things get filthy and I would caution family members to stop reading. It's also when my google adwords start making interesting link choices.

I found the one lone caucasian, a French college student. He was all kinds of hot. I would like to thanks Jesus Christ for three years of high school French - between our Franglais we were able to deduce that a massive hookup was forthcoming. I kinda grabbed him and headed for a darker room with a door. I pulled the door shut and heard a clink as my body connected with something cold and metallic. We had entered the sling room.

S+M is just something that old people do because they have run out of options - I am not there yet and headed back for the door. Then I realized that this experience would make for the best blog title ever - I swear to you this is why I stayed. How can you pass up a wordplay like that? It didn't help that the Aliens were outside, waiting to abduct and probe us in ways that are even unpleasant to me.

So, the French guy and I started fooling around bigtime. There was so much wood that we could have started a fire. Towels fell off and I spied a free condom dispenser on the wall. I need to install one of those at home.

If you have never attempted to fuck someone in a sling before, I suggest that you seek instruction before you try it. Even a diagram or hyroglyphic. If you are as inexperienced as I was, it can be as confusing as assembling a desk from Ikea. There is the constant re positioning, which is about as romantic as back surgery. Entry is quite simple given the exposed anatomy but then it gets a bit too Ringling Brothers and moves into a trapeze act. I awkwardly got some sort of motion going but there was no leverage, sort of like when astronauts try to move in zero gravity. I wasn't sure if I was supposed to grab him, the chains or a combination thereof.

Then there is sex noise, compounded with school playground noise, which is disconcerting on about nine levels. It goes like this in the blink of an eye: Slam, clank, pause for sling to come back down, bigger slam, relaunch. Way too much going on. Frenchy was well into it. I flashed to the future when he and his boyfriend Marcel would attend the Monsieur Leatherman competition, both wearing studded halter tops. I was thinking about closing down the whole operation when he blew like Mt St. Helen, making me wonder what else was on the floor in this room. Sex to completion was out of the question for me and I wasn't going to play the fake orgasm game. A simple "au revoire" and I was out the door, showered and headed for the street in five minutes.

Everyone talks about how reserved and sanitary Singapore is. About how there is no underbelly. I think they just aren't looking in the wrong places.

Blowing It In Singapore

Anyone who knows me will tell you one thing about me: I hate when people chew gum. Specifically, I despise when people chaw, gnarl and mangle their gum. A combination of this with bubblesnapping is enough to push me to the boundaries of sanity. I have had more cinematic daydreams about murdering gum-chewing fiends than there are stars.

It's a problem.

I decided to pitstop in Singapore because it is still the only place that gum is unlawful. This is my Holy Land. This is my Jesus Christ.

The horrors of gumchewing began with the Greeks and Aztecs, who chewed on tree resin. Things really didn't get cooking until a formula was patented in 1869, which found its way into gumball machines two years later. William Wrigley souped up the recipe with mint extracts in 1914, if only to drive me insane ninety years later. Frank Fleer was the real gum nazi, creating Blibber-Blabber in 1906 (the first bubble gum). If I had a time machine I would kill all of these men. Anyone - ANYONE - to do with the creation of this substance would fall to my axe.

Fortunately, there is Singapore. Gum was banned in 1992, after vandals began sticking it on the sensors of the prized Mass Rapid Transit. Here's the best part: Nobody even missed it. No black market ever developed, even though offenders were only "named and shamed" if caught, which is not even a slap on the wrist by Singapore standards. I wish I could tongue kiss the then-Prime Minister, Lee Kuan Yen, for saying "If you can't think because you can't chew, try a banana". Dude gets me hard when he talks all tough about gum law.

The resurfacing of legal gum in Singapore is an excellent example of just how bizarre and corrupt America can be. In 1999, desperate to open bilateral trade with Bush's USA, the Singapore government agreed to two things. The first was public support for the war in Iraq. The second was repealing the gum ban. That's quite a dicksucking for trade negotiation.

How did they end up swallowing their gum? Only Americans will fully understand, for we a retarded people. The year before, Wrigley's had hired a lobbyist and leaned on an Illinois congressman to put gum on the Bush Agenda. Only the devil knows what was traded in making this a sticky issue for Singapore, who picked up a 150 million dollar tax break per year on their end of the deal. Wrigley's had fucked them with a handful of spit and no condom.

The Singaporian government found a crafty way to save face. Some gum has medicinal purpose, even if is to help build enamel or fight cavities. Therefore, they made gum an item that must be handed out by pharmacists, only after taking down the names of customers for a national record. Any importing of gum is still illegal. There is something perversely exciting to me about this. I could buy a 19 inch black dildo in Manhattan but a person in Singapore must ask a pharmacist for a stick of Hubba Bubba.

For five days I have not seen a single person chew gum. No whorish women snapping their cud. No athletes mouthing the sticky substance like it was pussy on a first date. I have had beautiful, thoughtful moments without the presence of my nemesis. And nobody - not even the spoiled tourists - seems to miss it.

I propose a gumfree world. If I had a billion dollars I would buy lobbyists and make it a priority. I would not use the money to build houses for the poor or find a cure for the Superflu. I would find a way for Americans to choke on the estimated 300 sticks that each person chews every year.

Until then, Singapore.

Coming Up In Ubud and Down In Kuta

Anyone who has ever taken ecstasy will tell you that it is impossible to plan for when it will hit. It's up to the purity of the drug, the environment and your general mental state.

I had been waiting for this trip to hit me. To "come up", as they say. I thought for sure it would be scuba diving The Reef, skydiving in Sydney or chilling on the beach in Seminyak. But it never hit until tonight, in Ubud. Bammmmmmmm, just like when E hits. A force that knocks your knees out from under you and leaves you hanging there, floating above where your toes just were. Here is what I now understand about this trip.

The unplanned stops are going to be better than the planned ones. The low points are going to be lonely. I need to stop veering my course so accurately and pick left when it feels better than right, even if right has air conditioning and blowjobs. I nleed to take chances that I would never even conceive at home. I need to miss new york in a devastating way before I can go back.

I can't put my finger on why THIS is the place I came up but if you're a traveler then you will understand. Sometimes you unexpectedly pause in a place that feels right. At that point, either everything goes right or terribly wrong. Even when it goes wrong, you have a great story. Like the time I had to help bury a woman and slay cows on a fijian island. Another story.

I played Lonely Planet Roulette with my first guest house (Sarong House) and wished that I hadn't. The owner's children kicked, smashed and screamed their way through my 24 hour stay. I hit paydirt with a switch to Warsa Guest House, which was recommended by a friend. My little guest house had aircon, a great pool, a non-smelly shower and very friendly staff. Way-recommended if you are ever in Ubud (and not listed in Lonely Planet).

I became at ease with Tout Life. It's happened to me before. After you get over being annoyed by the haggling, you understand that these guys sometimes go eight hours without a sale and when they do, it can mean as little as one US dollar. Bali has never recovered from the bombing and there are simply not enough tourists to go around. Hotels and restaurants were erected for a banner decade. Now they sit empty and yet everyone here is still cheerful and nice. There is not a hint of crime, despite the lack of cashflow. I can deal with a little bit of hawking for that.

I finally caved and took a cab (mini van style) to a distant museum. I dug my driver Nyoman and we struck a deal for him to show me all of the local sites the following day. We went up into the hills and saw temples, rice fields and far-out sights. I had to put on a sarong every time I entered a temple and I can reveal here that they are kinda sexy. I ate lunch on a cliff but it was ruined by the instrumental balinese version of "my heart will go on" - imagine your nine year old sister playing it on clarinet while watching Titanic and you have the idea. Nyoman dropped me back at my guest house, scorned by evil looks from other taxi drivers who were not so lucky that day.

One night I went to a traditional Wayang Wong dance in a temple. It was like tripping balls and watching the off-Broadway production of The Legend Of Zelda. Two masked kings fought for a girl (straight out of Buffy), while the monkeys plotted to kill one of them. This went on for a good hour, without a translator. If it was a Nick Cage movie I would left after 15 minutes. But we were kind of in a sacred place and it may have been more conspicuous than jumping out of National Treasure 2.

My last two nights were in Kuta. I am not ashamed to say that I got a cheap rate at the Hard Rock Hotel and was looking forward to it. The chain seems to have sent only obscure and aged memorabilia to this outlet. The walls are lined with guitars from such noteables as Seven Mary Three, Better Than Ezra and Tom Cochrane. I lapped up every cheeseball video that played in the bar, thrilled to see Ted Nugent play a melodramatic solo in the pussyrock band Damn Yankees. I drank Papaya Don't Preach smoothees. I ran a tab at the hotel bar, where the Bali cover band played souped up Heart covers and dressed like AFI.

Inevitably, I guess, my comedown was horrible.

My last day here was ruined a boy drowning in the hotel pool. There is no Merideth Grey here...I watched the staff pull his lifeless, facedown body from the water after other sunbathers started pointing at him. The unsuccessful CPR was not followed by emergency helicopters or vacationing doctors with miracles. Just death. A little boy, dead. I am still trying to shake the screams and cries of the parents, which drove me to my room. Their life is clearly over. I am sure that I should be writing more about this but I just can't. It was a horrible thing to have seen. And now, five hours later, there are fifty people laughing and swimming in the pool.

Comedowns are a bitch.