The Travels of Dave

Kaka Bloc

2011-10-11T18:17:00.000-07:00

Hey everybody,

I know I'm supposed to talk about the trip to Haiti but let me first start this post with a bit of advice. If you decide to take a sleeping pill in order to make sure that you can get some rest on a redeye... WAIT UNTIL YOU'RE ON THE PLANE. Don't take it one hour before boarding. Ever.

If you do, you end up writing things in your notebook like this:

What it says doesn't really matter (actually, it's strangely pithy. I now understand Ken Kesey a bit better). It's more the fact that I couldn't manage to stay within a loose vertical column, then I took a right turn and decided to write up the side of the same page rather than, say, write on the next page. I also caused a minor incident by stumbling and shoving my way directly to the front of the line when my boarding group was called, experienced a hallucination involving a pulsating gate ramp as well as several awkward minutes of difficulty as my arithmetically challenged mind wrestled with the task of discovering my seat location.

That little pill definitely put me to sleep though. I woke up on the descent to Miami, then another flight to Port-Au-Prince (packed with the requisite missionaries in matching t-shirts) where I was picked up at the airport by Tammy, Cari and Richard. With Help Tammy Help Haiti's (HTHH) medical clinic in Cite Soleil nearing completion we traveled down to finish up whatever work needed to be done in order to make the clinic fully functional. Once that's done then HTHH plans to find a medical organization to make use of the space and provide services to the populace in the Boston area.

Keep away from small children

On my first day there we picked up a doctor from Medi-Share to bring her around to the clinic and see if they had any interest in making use of it. She had kind of a tough time wrapping her head around the concept of a clinic being built and ready for their use. She'd ask questions like "so you want us to pay rent?" No. "Ok, so you want us to buy the clinic from you?" No, we just want you to use it. "For free?" Yeah, well you have to support yourself and pay for electricity, but yeah. Though initially perplexed and a bit skeptical, Tammy and Cari were able to convince her that the whole thing was legit and that we're not psychos. Well, except for this guy.

The clinic itself looks great. Two stories, a pharmacy, two doctor's offices and plenty of space out front for triage. The work that remained to be done were things like filling cracks in the walls, reinforcing shelving in the offices, building benches, putting up razorwire on the security wall, and painting. We ended up tearing out all the shelving and rebuilding it since the previous carpenter thought it was ok for a shelf to be hanging off one screw about 2 inches off the wall.

The HTHH clinic

The first time I saw Robinson was when we were hanging out at Jamaica Base catching up with some of the folks there and playing with the kids. He zooms up on his scooter, says hello to everybody, sees me and yells out "Kaka bloc!" Well fuck me. Guess what all the kids were calling me over the next two weeks? This is what happens when you try to get too cute with a language you don't know. Last year I thought it'd be funny when we were pouring concrete to figure out how to say if you eat cement, you poop concrete (mange ciment, kaka beton). Well, somehow this got transmogrified into "mange ciment, kaka bloc" and then just to "kaka bloc" but it wasn't until Rob made his dramatic scooter entrance that it turned into my new alias. So now the kids call me Kaka Bloc, and when I try to say my name is not Kaka Bloc (mwen pa rele kaka bloc) they think that's even funnier, and there's nothing worse for your ego than having a pack of six-year-old kids (some of whom aren't wearing shoes... or pants) running around calling you Kaka Bloc. Well ha ha ha you little shits... next time you come into the clinic I'm going to put stool softener in your vitamins.

My Kreyol actually got pretty good over the couple of weeks. I got to the point where I could carry on a stilted conversation with most four-year-olds, though their condescension was palpable. Robinson was particularly patient with me and he was justly rewarded while trapped in the back of the car on the way to dinner with a stirring double rendition of Whitesnake's "Is This Love" by me and Rich.

Was David Coverdale touring through Bornemouth in early 1975? Maybe we should ask Mrs. Colbourne.

As far as the work on the clinic you can see what was completed in the pictures. All that's left to do is for someone to finish up the electrical and it's ready to go. We did take part of one day to distribute water in the neighboring area of Soutay. Tammy rented a water truck and we walked over with our local guys (Milot, Elton, Jean-Claude, Owl and Jean-Cheri) as security and crowd control. As Rich said, Boston is posh upper-class when compared to Soutay. Most of the dwellings are made of wood, tin, or corrugated iron rather than concrete and cinder blocks. I'm not sure what kind of access they have to water other than the tank one of the locals owns, and that requires payment. They certainly don't have access to a large tower like the one HTHH built in Boston.

Well once the truck came rumbling down the street and the hose was unfurled all hell broke loose. Most of us worked on the line filling up the buckets that people were bringing for the water while Milot and Elton tried in vain to get the locals to form some kind of a line. Eventually some semblance of order was achieved and we spent the best part of the next hour hauling buckets and pouring water. In retrospect I think that the crowd was mostly composed of women and kids. Why that is, I don't know. Cari did manage to take some fantastic pictures of the distribution, though.

Overall there was less excitement than last year, and I mean that in a good way... as in no guns. You never really want to get comfortable in Cite Soleil, though. We got a rock thrown into the windshield of our car while it was parked at Jamaica Base. That move was not particularly well thought-out by the perpetrator since it was right at that time that the UN was meeting with Tammy at the clinic to discuss funding. The next the UN had pictures of this kid so he spent the next week or so hiding out. The most bizarre incident occurred when we arrived one morning at Jamaica Base in the middle of an argument as Mario was kicking some woman out of the Mission Ranch clinic. Things got heated, she ended up getting shoved into some razor wire, then she got up, grabbed her three-year-old boy and tried to use him as a club to hit Mario and Milot. That was definitely something I've never witnessed before... literally using a child as a weapon.

People ask me if things are better in Haiti and I don't know quite how to answer that. First of all, I'm far from an expert having only spent about a month there, only in Port-Au-Prince and working strictly in Cite Soleil. Tammy, Cari, and even Rich have spent much more time there than I have. Larry and his wife Jean came down for a week while we were there and I think it's something like his 12th trip since the earthquake so you should ask him. I'm sure his answer would begin with a diatribe on "missionary tourists," include scores of f-bombs and talk about how improvements in Haiti would require lifestyle changes on our part. Larry's actually a pretty thoughtful guy, don't let the sexy red wife-beater deceive you.

When you drive through Port-Au-Prince, you drive on paved roads along streets that are lined with buildings made from concrete and rebar... we're not talking about dirt roads and mud shacks here. There must've been a point sometime in the past where there was the capital and resources to build this level of infrastructure, but now it's gone to shit. Crumbled, abandoned buildings (some due to the earthquake, many predating it) and streets that are on the verge of being undriveable due to the depth and number of potholes are the norm. There is no maintenance. Where did all the capital and resources go?

When talking about third-world countries the instinctive reaction most people in the first world have is corrupt government. It would be foolish to say that it has not been an issue in Haiti since there has been plenty of evidence to show that this has been the case (see Duvalier). That's just one aspect of this complex situation. I asked Robinson about Haitian economics when we were out to dinner one night. He told us about what his father said, that twenty or thirty years ago people were poor but they could still find jobs. Now it seems like a large part of the work has dried up. All it takes are a few Google searches to find out that, as part of the conditions for IMF loans back in the 80s and 90s, Haiti was forced to lower or eliminate its import tariffs. As a result the (subsidized) US agriculture industry was able to export rice and beans to Haiti at a lower cost than their farmers could produce them, essentially making rice and bean farming untenable as an industry. So today the poorest country in the western hemisphere is one of the United States' largest importers of rice.

I'm not a policy expert, however, and I'm sure if you spend a few minutes looking things up yourself that you'll be able to discover a multitude of reasons and theories on Haiti's economic situation and how/if it can be improved. What I know is what I see, and what I see are guys like Robinson who works tirelessly with multiple charities on various projects to improve the quality of life in Cite Soleil. Or a guy like Elton who told me that he would love to move his kids out of Cite Soleil if he had the money, but that he would stay even if he could afford to move out because he wants to work to make it a better place to live. And luckily there are people like Tammy, Cari, and Rich who besides working on projects like the clinic and the water tower use their own money to put kids in school and pay for medicine and medical procedures for those who can't afford it.

Anyhow, there's still a lot of work to be done. People have been asking me if it was a good trip or if I felt like I accomplished anything. To be honest, it sometimes feels like you're pissing on a forest fire. Lucky for me, I have the bladder of a 90 year old man so once the seal is broken it's off to the races. So we'll just keep pissing I guess. Besides, all the Prestige that Rich and I drink when we're down there has to come out somewhere. Maybe we should push for full Haitian employment at Brasserie D'Haiti... then they could export Prestige to the U.S. and England.

Without further ado, here are the pictures...

Kaka Bloc

Take 'er easy,

Dave

A Week in Pictures

2011-08-28T21:08:00.000-07:00

Hey everybody,

One of my checklist items for the year was to take my camera with me during a typical week and take a bunch of random pictures of miscellaneous crap. I thought it'd be a good way to record a snippet of this period of my life but it also turns out it's a great way to realize and appreciate what you've got. San Francisco's a fantastic place to live and it's never lacking for things to do. Just a bunch of random shit in a random week... Kendall's open mic, street food festival, poker, fire trucks, low-riders, homebrew tastings... the usual. The only downside of re-living the week was the number of pictures that involve the office. Ghastly.

Here's the link...

A Week In Pictures

Take 'er easy,
Dave

Ridin' the Trans Mongolian

2011-07-15T11:06:00.000-07:00

Hey everybody,

I finally had some time to clip together videos from the epic Beijing-Moscow journey Mae, Jeremy, Rich and I took back in April. Feel the power of the Panda!!!

Take 'er easy,
Dave

The Paris of Siberia

2011-04-27T09:25:00.000-07:00

Hey everybody,

Last time I left you we had just crossed the border from Mongolia into Russia on our way to our next stop: Irkutsk. The only reason we planned on stopping in Irkutsk is because it's a territory from the board game Risk, but we later found out that it's known as the "Paris of Siberia" according to Mae's guidebook. I'm not sure how much that means... you could say that Cleveland is the "Paris of Lake Erie" considering that it's competing against Buffalo and Detroit. Regardless, Irkutsk is the most popular stop along the Trans-Siberian railroad mostly because it's the jumping-off point for Lake Baikal, the world's oldest and deepest lake.

The train chaos continued well into Russia because this it's there that the Mongolian smugglers finally get to unload their wares. It's at the first stop where we almost lost Mae. Now, I should explain a bit about how the stops work. The train is on a set schedule where it only stops at certain cities along the route. The stops can vary anywhere from 2 to 30 minutes. The duration of the stop is posted on the train, but it's always a good idea to check with the conductor to see how much time you have if you want to jump off and buy supplies or whatever.

Cross-border commerce in full effect

So we get to the first stop in Russia which I think was called "Slyudyanka 1" and Rich, Jeremy and I decide to get out to stretch our legs. The Mongolian conductor lady tells us we only have two minutes and we exit the train to witness what can only be described as a flurry of commerce between the locals and the smugglers. There were probably about 50 people involved in this two minute scrum that saw a significant offloading of Mongolian merchandise. We hopped back on the train, back to our compartment and... no Mae. This is when the train started moving.

The first thing that came to my mind was that I have to buy one of those elastic body harnesses that they strap on to hyperactive kids and from now on use it to tie Mae to a fixed object whenever she's going to be out of sight. I turn around and the conductor is standing right behind us, realizing what happened, and she starts yelling at us in Mongolian. Then one of the chubby smuggler ladies comes storming down the aisle, pointing and laying into us as well. Since Mongolian wasn't a language that was offered at my high school, the best I can make out is that the smuggler lady saw Mae get out but wasn't going to stop her because she was busy selling pants or something. The one thing that was clear was that both of them held the three of us personally responsible for losing a member of our party. This is when we see Mae making her way down the aisle.

The smuggler lady sees her, starts pointing and barking, then grabs Mae, spins her around and starts spanking her. Then she walks off to her compartment in a huff. Apparently Mae had gotten off to buy some water and realized too late that the train was moving. She then proceeded to fight her way through the crowd and jump onto a moving train a few cars down from ours... she does her own stunts ladies and gentlemen! Luckily, the next stop was actually one where we were supposed to leave.

We spent a day walking around "The Paris of Siberia" mostly looking at old buildings and Russian women. Well, at least us three guys did. The most striking architectural feature of Irkutsk is that the downtown area is filled with old 19th and early 20th century buildings that look like something out of a Western, and it seems as though at least half of them are abandoned. The weather wasn't that cold actually, at least nowhere near the Siberian stereotype. The toughest part of the day was ordering food, though Rich, Jeremy and I will eat just about anything. The challenge was for Mae, who over the course of nine days managed to butcher the Russian phrase for "I'm a vegetarian" about 457 different ways, none of them successful at communicating her dietary restrictions. The one time it did work in Listvyanka the guy behind the counter just looked at her, put his hands over his eyes and made gesture of putting food in his mouth basically saying "close your eyes and eat it." The locals turned out to be pretty friendly, especially after a few beers, and especially the ones that can speak some English. We ended up at the famous Liverpool Bar until 3AM, where we met a flair bartender, the bass player for a cover band, some German guy working in the oil business, a student, and a tattooed guy wearing a wife beater who told me my ink was shit. He was kind enough to refer me to Irkutsk's premier tattoo artist in case I wanted to get my egregious deformities corrected. Good times.

The next day we headed to Listvyanka which is a small town on the edge of Lake Baikal. The lake itself is spectacular; the part where we stayed was completely frozen over and, being there on a Sunday afternoon, we saw families walking around on the lake, hovercraft, snowmobiles, and cars driving on the lake dragging kids in innertubes behind them. Honestly, I can't do the lake justice; I could've easily sat and stared at it for hours. We ended up at a shack/cafe in a parking lot facing the lake and eating smoked fish. The lady who ran our guesthouse hooked us up with a banya, which is a Russian sauna of an extremely high temperature during which you're supposed to whack each other on the back with wet pine branches. I don't ask questions in these situations, plus I'm pretty sure it's not considered S&M if the pine branches are fresh. I do know that we got to wear some awesome wool hats.

The following day marked the beginning of our longest stretch on the train: 3 1/2 days. I know what you're thinking... surely after the migrant laborers and the smugglers, this next bit must be where the romance of the Trans-Siberian really begins! Well, if your idea of romance features a dozen shirtless Russian guys roaming the aisles of your 100 degree train car then you would be in heaven. Combine that with no showers for over three days and the nocturnal sound sensation known as Jeremy "The Chainsaw" Gilmore and you have the perfect recipe for a pleasure ride.

To be honest, the time passes by more quickly than you expect. You're in a train compartment with three close friends chatting, drinking, and playing cards. Jeremy had a dream where he was directing a telenovela so every once in a while he'd look at Rich and say "Ricardo... mas emocion!" You make friends with the provodnista (conductor) because she can get you beer more cheaply than on the train platforms. You watch Rich as he frets over the next text message he's going to send to/receive from his girlfriend, and then you laugh at him when he loses signal. You watch the Siberian scenery going by, which embodies what must be meant by the phrase "stark beauty." From Irkutsk almost all the way to Moscow the path was lined with endless forests of beautiful white birch trees broken up by the odd village here and there. Looking at the construction of some of those shacks you wonder how anybody could survive a cold Siberian winter living in those things. Even though the scenery is repetitive, it isn't boring in any way, in fact it's strangely mesmerizing. By the way, if you were wondering what the perfect train journey music is, it's any early John Lee Hooker or Muddy Waters. Trust me on this.

We mostly bought food at the various train stops from these tiny shops on the platforms typically manned by old Russian ladies. You can also buy beer from them, but vodka is illegal to sell on the platforms... apparently Russia has a problem with alcoholism! Shhh... don't tell anybody. Anyway, if you do end up eating on the train rather than getting food from the platforms, make sure you actually *go* to the dining car instead of letting the sexy librarian dining attendant talk you into receiving dinner in your compartment. How can she talk you into it if you don't speak any Russian, you may ask? Good question... the strategy is, when she sees that you don't understand, to speak Russian louder and faster than before, as if the sheer volume and intensity of her command of the language will force its knowledge into your brain. What actually happens is that you just nod at everything she says and the three of you end up spending a hundred bucks on pork chops.

We did manage to meet a couple of people along the way. Leila was on her way to London to work front of the house at one of Joel Robuchon's restaurants and she taught us more about caviar than we would've thought possible. Mae, desperate for a fourth to play Shanghai Rummy, roped in a guy named Ivan who turned out to be a soldier stationed on the Russia/China border that was going home to get married. He spent most of his time hanging out in our compartment trying to hide from the provodnik who was flirting with him. Like I said, three days went by quickly, and my greatest personal achievement was putting one of the train car's toilets permanently out of order.

I feel confident in saying
this photo isn't taken very often

Once we finally reached Moscow, also known as "The Paris of Europe," we were badly in need of a strong dose of the three S's. We split up since Mae went to meet her friend Sef who had flown in from London and only ended up seeing each other sparingly for the rest of the weekend. We had four days in Moscow and spent most of our time simply walking around and getting to know the city. The Kremlin was by far the most impressive thing we saw in our time in Moscow. It's much larger than I anticipated and it's obvious that a lot of resources go into maintaining the structure and it's surroundings. To be honest, I expected Moscow to be a little more... I dunno... Soviet. Maybe I thought I'd see a bunch of factories with no windows billowing smoke, or big boxy gray apartment buildings, or monolithic government buildings with giant imposing statues of communist leaders filling the city. From what we saw, though, the town center looks pretty much like a modern metropolis. It's obvious that there is a lot of money in Moscow. The city is plastered with either new construction or buildings undergoing renovation. Seeing any of the old Soviet-era Lada cars is a rarity since most of what you'll see driving down the street are late-model SUVs, BMWs or Mercedes. Jeremy said he'd never seen so many Bentleys in one day. Moscow was ranked 15th most expensive city in the world last year, ahead of Paris and New York, which explains why we couldn't find a beer for under $6. On the bright side, the city does contain 13 TGI Friday's restaurants. The best part was how everyone we met, including the Russians, told us we should've gone to St. Petersburg instead.

We did luck out by meeting a couple of university students, Lisa from Belarus and Alice from Moldova, that volunteered to take us around the city and show us a couple of spots where tourists typically don't end up. They took us to a huge square commemorating the fallen of World War II that's punctuated by an obelisk that looks about 10 stories high. Russians are big on the WWII memorials and it's common for newlyweds to visit a memorial on their wedding day and place flowers there. We visited an exhibition park that included exhibit halls from different parts of the former Soviet Union and then on to an amusement park where we rode some go-karts that the local Russian guys treat as their version of Death Race 2000. We ended up eating dinner at Elki-Palki, which was great only because I enjoy saying Elki-Palki and listening to Alice try to explain what it means. It was nice to have a couple of natives there to translate the menu since it normally took me half an hour to slowly mouth the literal sounds from the Cyrillic alphabet before realizing that I still don't know what "mrsa" means.

Russian ladies' casual wear

Before I go, I'd like to make a special mention of the Russian ladies, from Irkutsk to Moscow, which Jeremy, Rich and I agreed have to rank in the top five worldwide. If you enjoy six-inch stripper heels, which apparently are a required accessory, then bump them up a couple of ranks. That being said, where are the women over 45? They are nowhere to be found. It's like a real-life version of Logan's Run. Also... let's talk about Russian guys for a second. A large percentage of them look like their face was caught in a bear trap somewhere around age 7. They accentuate their natural looks with a haircut that is a combination of Moe from The Three Stooges in the front and a ferocious mullet in the back: The Moeullet. Along with the track pants, it's understandable how this combination would be irresistible to Russian women. Seriously... we don't understand, someone please explain. We had to come up with a term for it, pulling a Sputnik, when we saw a particularly egregious example of a mismatch, mostly because the word Sputnik is cool (yes, that's the best we could do after 9 days). To be fair, not all of them suffered from these conditions, but it was enough to notice. Also, I expected Russian guys to be bigger. Not that they were small, they were normal, but I guess when you grow up with Ivan Drago and Nikolai Volkoff, you expect more.

Well, that's it for now. I won't be going anywhere for a while, so hopefully you enjoy these pics (just click the image below). Again, they were mostly poached from the rest of the crew since whenever I try to take a beautiful still shot something like an electrical pole or other such object inevitably jumps into my frame.

The Paris of Siberia

Take 'er easy,
Dave

Everyone Loves a Panda

2011-04-20T09:03:00.000-07:00

Hey everybody,

I wrote this bit on the train about a day and a half out from Moscow on the journey across Siberia. We’d been on that portion of the ride two days since we left Irkutsk and no one had tried to throw us off the train, though Mae really did her best to make this happen. My travel beard had grown ferocious and wild... it could not be contained and visibly frightened children and small animals. I wish I could say the same about my travel hairline.

This all started because Rich has been on the road for the last year or so but is due back in England in April for the annual scan to make sure he still has a brain. Though anecdotal evidence suggests otherwise, the NHS insists on thoroughness. Rich wanted to mark the Trans-Siberian (I guess Trans-Mongolian technically) off his life checklist. The call went out... who would be dumb enough to join Rich in this quest spanning 6 days and 7000 Km in one train compartment?

Mae, Jeremy and I flew to Beijing where we met Rich for three days in the Chinese capitol; a city where where Mae is considered tall and if the air were a crayon it would be burnt sienna. Apparently our visit coincided with a holiday and everywhere we went was packed with Chinese tourists. As we wandered through the narrow hutongs where our hostel was located we were reassured that we were indeed among civilized people by the sight of a conveniently placed Starbucks across the street from Tiananmen Square.

Coming soon to the Folsom Street Fair

The square itself is fairly vast and surrounded by imposing government buildings and museums. With all the Chinese tourists around there was one thing in particular that stood out: The popularity of asscrack pants for kids. I don't know what else to call them... they're regular pants with the part over the crack completely open, and the deluxe model even has an opening in the front. They look like tiny chaps except they're made from cotton and worn by a Chinese toddler.

Tiananmen Square faces directly on to the Forbidden Palace which, judging by the amount of time we had to wait in line to get in, uses a very liberal definition of the word "forbidden." Once inside we noticed that, while the first few buildings were nicely restored, the further you walk into the grounds, the more run-down it gets. Honestly, the two things that stood out about the Forbidden Palace were that it has a basketball court (no joke) and the garden on the north end is fairly well-kept. Oh yeah, and while waiting in line we bought these mystery flavored popsicles that were made out of some kind of space-age substance that wouldn’t melt even after a half hour in the sun.

Panda Reservoir Dogs

We wandered north through a series of hutongs on our way to the lake district, during which Rich had the genius idea of buying a panda hat at one of Beijing’s many panda-themed stores. Three white guys wearing panda hats instantly became the most popular attraction around Beihai Park. People kept stopping us to take pictures, or asking us to take pictures with them, or simply pointing and laughing. The only logical step at this point was to rent a three-man bicycle and ride a lap around the two lakes which, I have to admit, was one of the most fun things I've ever done. Apparently the sight of a triple-threat panda bike is quite rare. We were celebrities for a day; I have no idea how many pictures were taken of us since the ones that we took are only a fraction. We even crashed a modeling photo shoot. It was like “Anchorman”… I don’t know if you know this, but we’re kind of a big deal in Beijing. Not to overestimate the impact, but the three of us may be responsible for the single greatest achievement in Sino-Western international relations of the last 20 years. Which… apparently didn't extend as far as the cab drivers because at the end of the night no one would stop to pick up three giant pandas and a bunny.

The next day Jeremy and Rich had... uh... a little trouble waking up (they’ll say otherwise but they are liars, drunks, and probably sodomites) so Mae and I ended up taking a trip to the Great Wall on our own. The bus ride was over three hours during which we were treated to a hearty breakfast featuring the Chinese staples of Sausage McMuffins and coffee, then handed identification tags to wear around our necks because our guide candidly admitted to the group that all foreigners look alike to her and if we wanted lunch we’d better wear our tags.

The portion of the wall that we visited was at Jinshianling which luckily was not very crowded. The Great Wall itself is a remarkable achievement in construction and they've performed some diligent work to restore a good portion of it. I have to admit though that I didn't feel the same sense of history walking along the wall that I've felt at other ancient sites I've visited. Maybe what dampened my enthusiasm was the fact that the surrounding landscape at the end of winter is brown and the air is hazy so that the wall itself seems to blend into its environment. I'm glad we saw the wall but I'm not sure I'd sit through another 7+ hours of bus rides for a return trip.

At 7:30 AM the next morning began the first leg of our train journey which spanned a day and a half from Beijing to Ulan Bator. The allure of the train journey has long been a topic of writers over the years, wistfully dreaming about the possibilities such a trip may afford. Well any romantic ideas about the ride tend to disappear when you enter a train car filled with migrant laborers that smells like cigarette smoke and b.o. This marked the beginning of Mae’s multinational one-woman campaign to rid Chinese and Mongolian trains of unauthorized smoking, or, as the rest of us liked to call it, the campaign to get our asses kicked in a foreign country. Actually, Mae had multiple one-woman campaigns along our journey that fit under the same umbrella, but this was the one that came closest to success (not for the smoking, for the ass-kicking).

Creepy Chinese Waldo

Sure we made friends, like the creepy guy who looked like a Chinese version of Where's Waldo blessed/cursed with Kathleen Turner's “Jessica Rabbit” voice. He wandered around our train car, opening the door to our compartment and asking the same questions over and over like "Are you American?" and "Do you like China?" and “Do you like spicy food?” then walking off. The highlight was when he opened up our compartment door and asked "Do you sleep at night?" then rubbed his hands and walked away. We started locking our door after that.

There's not much countryside to speak of from Beijing all the way to the border… it's all cities and factories that are difficult to distinguish through the smoky air. We saw some power plants, which was exciting. The laborers exited the train at a town about 50 miles from the Mongolian border.

You are only allowed to import items
valued at less than 100 dollars!

Let me ask this question… why do border guards have to dress like they were officers from The Empire in Star Wars? When did this become the official outfit? You’re half asleep, filling out forms that are either in a foreign language or written in third-grade English, this guy walks in and you’re somehow expecting Darth Vader to follow him through the door asking you what you’ve done with the plans for the Death Star. Between midnight and 2AM someone stormed into our compartment approximately 847 times. The only one of us that was immune to the hassle was Jeremy, passed out on the upper bunk, wearing a panda hat.

We awoke to the sights of the Mongolian plains outside our windows, endless stretches of rolling hills occasionally dotted with villages of round huts called gers or with packs of wild horses running free. Occasionally the solemnity of the Gobi desert would be broken by a factory or some kind of refinery but the landscape remained fairly barren until we began to reach the outskirts of Ulan Bator. We went from seeing one car every hundred miles to full-fledged traffic jams as we motored toward the center of the city. UB immediately strikes you as a place that doesn't fit with the rest of the Mongolia that we saw through the compartment window. There are newly constructed highrises and office buildings through the center of town, and the roads are jammed with late model cars and SUVs.

After spending a day in the city I wouldn't say that Ulan Bator should be a destination in itself. I think most travelers who visit Mongolia go there to experience a trip to a village to live in a ger for a few days, using UB as a stopping point on the way there and back. It has the requisite giant main square surrounded by government buildings and museums with statues of great Mongolians. The people are tall, they seem to take great care to dress stylishly, and the consensus among the three guys was that Mongolian women are surprisingly hot. We had a couple of great meals where I ate some of the best lamb in my life and the Mongolian yogurt was fantastic. The one reminder of the nearby desert is the constant grit in your teeth from the dust blown into the city.

The next leg of the rail trip can only be referred to as... chaos. As soon as we boarded there was a flurry of activity all up and down not only our car but the entire length of the train. Mongolians with bags full of clothes, bags, shoes and other stuff were running up and down into each others' compartments then coming out with a whole different set of stuff. A couple of people popped their heads through our door speaking Mongolian and wanting to hand us bags and clothes to store in the bins under our seats or overhead. One guy who stank of vodka and was clearly off his face barged in and tried to force a couple of his bags in the bin under where Mae was sitting, so we had to physically kick the dude out. He showed up again a few hours later, stumbled into our compartment, grabbed his junk, pointed at me and yelled "peesta!" then left.

I felt like we were somehow stowaways on a 10-car smuggling vessel. The motion up and down the aisles was almost constant for the hours until we reached the Mongolian border with Russia. This is when things started to get really interesting. Once the Mongolians figured out that they couldn't get some items through the border, they'd bundle them up and throw them out the window to some friends they had waiting outside the train for just such an emergency. The Mongolian border guards went easy on us, but we could hear all sorts of ruckus going on in the compartments nearby as they turned them upside down. They were nothing though compared to the Russians, who went as far as to open up the light fixtures in the compartments and the aisles to make sure nobody was trying to smuggle drugs. In spite of all this a large chunk of merchandise made it through, though I don't know how you could not spot it when a guy is wearing 10 sweaters. There's no way that happens without the conductors and some of the officials getting a cut of the action. Remarkably, we got through cleanly with no one wearing a panda hat.

Next time... Russia. For now, enjoy these pics from China and Mongolia, most of which I blatantly poached off my travel mates...

https://picasaweb.google.com/thetravelsofdave/EveryoneLovesAPanda?feat=directlink

Take 'er easy,

Dave

Giant celebration in the Mission district

2010-11-02T11:55:00.000-07:00

Hey everybody,

In case you missed it... the SF Giants won the World Series last night. In a related story, there were riots. I didn't see any rioting, just a bunch of people going apeshit up and down 24th street. I felt like Martin Sheen going upriver in Apocalypse Now. I believe I saw Dennis Hopper somewhere on 24th and Treat.

Anyhow, here are a couple of videos that capture a bit of the moment. Enjoy...

Helping Tammy

2010-08-06T05:33:00.000-07:00

Hey everybody,

In order to best appreciate Haiti, or at least Port-Au-Prince, one must have the ability to embrace chaos. Over the course of two weeks the best I was able to do was accept chaos, which I think is pretty good for my first time there. I'm not simply talking about traffic or human chaos, though there's a lot of that, but I'm also talking about social and political chaos. There are many assumptions that someone from the "first world" has about society in general that need to be either forgotten or ignored in order to successfully navigate through an environment like the one in Haiti. For anyone considering traveling to Haiti, I'd suggest trying a middle-of-the-road country before plunging in... maybe something in southeast Asia or South America? What would you call that, a "gateway country"?

Port-Au-Prince is pleasantly innocuous-smelling, other than when you drive by an open sewer or a pile of burning tires and/or garbage. Traffic laws, if they do exist, are loosely followed except (mercifully) at stoplights, but that gives the twelve kids hanging out on the center divider have enough time to try and hustle you for some money. A smoothly paved road is a distant dream, as is pretty much any sort of public sanitation. Crumbled buildings line the streets, blackouts are commonplace, and power lines coalesce into rat's nests that sometimes lie barely overhead.

Tammy booked us in at a hotel called the Visa Lodge, which with its immaculate bungalows and pristine pool doesn't look like it belongs even on the same planet as the rest of PAP. It was at times jarring to travel from a slum to a pool in less than 15 minutes, especially in a place where water is such a precious commodity. In order to make up for that, as some sort of mind-numbing torture they would keep the television set to ESPN news 24/7. It's hard to wrap your mind around working in one of the poorest slums in Haiti then seeing a channel dedicated entirely to speculation about whether or not Brett Favre is going to play football this year. We would have to seclude ourselves in the safety of the Man Cave, our dungeon-like room underneath the dining hall which quickly assumed the lovely aroma of stale beer, gummy vitamins, and balls.

From Helping Tammy

Over the course of the two weeks there were anywhere from three to nine of us working together because of our staggered arrival times. Max, Rich, Jeremy, Tammy and I all knew each other from Thailand. Cari (a director with Tam's charity) and Jamie are Tammy's friends from Kingston. Nelson is an ex-Army engineer that Tammy hired to come help with the construction and design of the medical clinic. Last but not least was Dr. Larry (aka Boot Pep) who is not really a doctor but plays one in Haiti. He also likes to take pictures of people's asses. This was Larry's seventh trip to Haiti since the earthquake.

HTHH (Help Tammy Help Haiti) focuses its work in a small area of Cite Soleil known as Boston. For a bit of background you might want to check out the short Wikipedia article on Cite Soleil located HERE, though what it describes is only the tip of the iceberg. Here's a video of us driving through Cite Soleil:

As we were driving in on my first day the car was surrounded by a bunch of half-naked kids chanting "Ta-mi! Ta-mi!" which I assumed she had set up by bribing them with candy but actually turned out to be a recurring event. Every time we got out of the car we'd be assaulted by a group of at least six kids who wanted us to hold their hands or carry them and, of course, hardly any of them were wearing pants.

My first couple of days involved some work in the existing clinic that was built by a missionary group called Mission Ranch. I wouldn't really call what I did "work" since it involved handing Larry and/or Tammy any number of creams, vitamins, pedialyte pops or painkillers while they were examining a patient. I learned certain subtleties of the medical practice, such as the use for "vag packs" and the number of acceptable observers when Tammy is examining someone for hemorrhoids (three). From my short time as a de facto nurse practitioner it is painfully obvious that there exists a fundamental lack of infrastructure and understanding of even the most basic health care practices in Haiti. When we arrived in the morning there was often a line out the door to the clinic, and most of the ailments were treatable with remedies that you or I could find at our corner drug store. Compounding the problem is the lingering belief in voodoo which often pits the witch doctors' remedies in direct conflict with the application of modern medicine.

Infant care is particularly atrocious, which is not necessarily surprising when as Larry told me the mortality rate is so high that they don't celebrate a child's birthday until they're four or five years old. The birth of a child is often regarded as the burden of another mouth to feed rather than a cause for celebration. Many pregnancies are unwanted since it's not uncommon for girls to be raped at some point in their teenage years.

We had one case where a mother brought in a baby girl who was less than two months old and so emaciated that I could count her individual ribs. One of Larry's hands could almost wrap around the baby's entire body. It was difficult to figure out why the baby was so malnourished; we have to work through translators and sometimes the parents or patients are either despondant, ignorant, or outright reluctant to answer questions. In this case, the mother was only sporadically breastfeeding the baby for some reason that was unclear. The baby seemed like it was asleep, but when we gave it some pedialyte it perked up and started squirming around, after which I was able to feed her about an ounce of formula since that's all she could handle. Larry and Tammy gave the mother some formula to take home but emphasized that she needs to continue trying to breastfeed the baby since a mother can stop producing breast milk in as few as three days and there's no way she'll have enough access to formula to keep the baby alive. She was supposed to come back to check in with the baby a few days later but we never saw them. A week later Larry did manage to bring another baby that was in a similar condition to the hospital for treatment.

I found myself more comfortable with the construction work after we broke ground on the future HTHH medical clinic. Our team was used mostly for grunt work such as digging and moving earth and concrete while the Haitian team led by their engineer Jackson performed most of the skilled labor. In the short time I was there, we managed to dig and pour the concrete for the foundation, lay the rebar and the columns for the base, and wall up and fill the level up to the first floor. I left before the first floor pour, unfortunately, but you'll be able to see more detail from the pictures and video:

One random fact you may not know about Haiti: It's hot! Yeah... I was surprised too! Also... construction is hard work! I know, these facts are shocking. I was so gnarly with sweat and dirt at the end of the day that even the Haitian kids wouldn't touch me. They would just come up and poke me with a finger, look up and say "sal" and walk away. I'd like to point out that Tammy assured us we'd have "four or five" cement mixers available, but she failed to mention that in Haiti a cement mixer means two guys with a shovel. We required many (many) breaks. During one of our many (many) breaks Max asked me if it was the heat or if we were just five years older. I had to admit it was probably both. Even though I age backward like Benjamin Button. Mentally.

In addition to the work itself, there were constant reminders of the dangers of working in Cite Soleil. We were always accompanied by one or more of Tammy's security team to try and avoid any trouble. Even the short 50 yard walk from the Mission Ranch clinic to the construction site required an escort. Occasionally we would see a U.N. armored transport cruising by, but most of the local "law enforcement" is provided by the gangs. Perhaps one of Tammy's most remarkable accomplishments is the bond she's been able to forge with the local gang leaders in Boston whereby they not only tolerated but welcomed our presence and understood the benefits that Tammy's work could provide their community. That understanding only has a radius of a couple the couple of city blocks that are our gang's territory, and any venturing out of that area is asking for trouble. To be fair, though, the most dangerous part of our day usually involved Tammy's driving us to the worksite.

From Helping Tammy

About a week into it, we were invited by the locals to a football match between Boston and another team on a late Saturday afternoon. The match itself was an incredible experience. It was played on a concrete basketball court which was completely surrounded by people at least five deep. Being that we were the only blancs in attendance we garnered quite a bit of attention, but it was all positive. I have to admit that I was a bit concerned at being one of the six white people in a crowd of a couple of hundred locals in one of the poorest slums in Haiti, but that concern dissipated after only a few minutes, and by minutes I mean beers. Kids were running up and grabbing our legs asking to have their pictures taken, our friends from the clinic and the construction site were buying us drinks, and we even got high-fives from one of the players after one of Boston's goals. There was a play-by-play guy who liked to scream and play sounds of gunshots through the P.A. system, which was fun for everybody. We were also treated to a bizarre and disturbing halftime show involving 8-year-old girls grinding like extras from a Britney Spears video. Good times.

On the way home the six of us piled into the truck and took the road between Boston and Soute with Tammy taking pictures of the sunset out her driver's side window. This is probably the point where we should've had our guard up but hey, we spaced out... we're only human. Tammy hit the brakes as one guy moved out in front of the car looking as if we were going to hit him. Next thing we know there are two handguns through the driver's side window as a couple of guys are struggling to grab Tammy's camera. Tammy wisely gave it up after a few seconds of struggle and the guys ran off. It all happened so quickly that, being in the back seat, I only realized what was going on after the fact. I remember a black gun and a silver gun being waved around at the girls (Tammy, Cari and Jamie were in the front seats), one of which was against Tammy's head, and that's about it. We hauled ass out of there and didn't stop until we reached the hotel. Tammy took it hard, more so because she's the team leader and felt badly that the team had to experience it than anything else. From my end, I felt that it was a good thing to happen. No one was hurt and though we did lose a camera we were also reminded of the environment we were in and that we have to be aware at all times. We found out a few days later that one of the thieves was killed when they tried to pull the same thing on a Haitian driver who didn't stop and just ran the guy over.

We had a couple of other incidents that affected us more indirectly, such as was when a couple of gangs came looking for each other down the streets of Boston requiring us to hide out in the clinic building until things blew over. It was obvious that they weren't interested in us because they knew exactly where we were hiding. Still, when you're walking down the street and you see anxious locals scattering back to their homes it's probably a good idea to follow the security team back into a the building and chill out for a bit.

(P.S. There is no need to mention the content of the preceding two paragraphs to my grandma so... be cool.)

I think we made some friends in Boston once we showed that we only wanted to work hard and help out in whatever way we could. Here are a few standouts that I've stolen from Max's notes with comments from both of us:
Jonbenson- That's his name. Not just Jon, you have to say Jonbenson. Good kid, hung out a lot with us, got made fun of because people said he looks like King Kong.
Peter- Good guy. Slow talker. Kept wanting to hook us up with his sister.
Milot- Mutt-faced security guy with a constant scowl, which is what you want in a security guy.
Dodes- Young, flirty girl who hangs around the clinic and the worksite. Will probably get somebody killed someday.
Ken Ken- Tall young kid who loaned me his Kreyol-English dictionary. Used to be a child soldier for one of the gangs but was rehabilitated. Has a chip on his shoulder but a good heart.
Clifton- Nice kid who translates and wants to learn English. Changes clothes a couple of times a day, doesn't like to get dirty.
There were loads of other memorable characters that you can see in the pictures and videos. The locals that worked with us were paid $5 per day, and the labor was coordinated by Jackson who was the local engineer responsible for construction.

We managed to have a few laughs mostly thanks to the discovery of Bavaria beer at the local Texaco station. They give you 50% more! For free! And trust me on this when I say that we had days where cries of "50% more" are what kept us going. I would also like to share with you the joys of goat meat, which I assure you is not a primer on bestiality but an endorsement of Goat Kreyol. And if you love rice and beans... this is the country for you! Know who loves rice and beans? Larry! He can't get enough. Rice and beans and protein bars! Boot Pep, this is for you:

From Helping Tammy

Some of the guys on the worksite would try and teach us Kreyol... they would sing this song that over and over again about "craisson" which we eventually found out means watercress. The obsession with watercress remains a mystery. Also, if you ever want to impress Haitians on a construction site tell them "Mwah mange ciment, caca beton" which means "I eat cement and shit concrete." It's money in the bank. Rich was often compared to either Jesus (because of the hair) or a vampire (because of his freakish canines). We became a popular attraction simply by virtue of the fact that we spoke English, so random dudes would show up to practice chatting or to ask us about obscure tenses and conjugations. And it was always dudes... the only woman we ever saw between the ages of 10 and 40 was Dodes, which in retrospect is kind of weird. They were probably hiding from Rich. I know I'd keep my daughter as far from him as possible.

After experiencing the environment in Cite Soleil firsthand, it is obvious that what Tammy has taken it upon herself to accomplish in the Boston/Jamaica Base area is staggering. Through persistence and force of will, a two person team of Tammy and Robinson has managed over three years to create an institution inside this small area of Cite Soleil. It has taken extraordinary effort and persistence to ingratiate herself with the locals and, more importantly, the local gang, and cultivate the relationships necessary for the relatively incident-free construction of the water tower and now the medical clinic. Even the U.N. soldiers that we met were amazed at our group's ability to work relatively unmolested in the Boston/Jamaica Base area, and that was directly due to the dedication to building the proverbial bridges by Tammy and Robinson. Robinson is the real miracle worker there, juggling the relationships between the various gangs with the logistical tasks in hiring the local labor along with the partnership with the folks from outside Haiti. It's difficult to describe with one word what Robinson's role is, other than maybe he's the facilitator that enables all the work in Jamaica Base to actually take place. Tammy said it best... the project could continue if something happened to her but not if something happened to Robinson.

Port-Au-Prince also held an interesting cast of characters among the non-natives since there is nobody who goes to Haiti for tourism... every visitor has an agenda. There was Chuck, an executive for a company called DRC that specializes in post-disaster reconstruction, who drank with us and generously bought us all dinner a couple of times. He was meant to stay in Haiti for several months to oversee a construction project for the World Food Bank. There's a lot of money to be made in the disaster business. Then there was Jim, an old man from Arizona who was in Cite Soleil looking for a little girl he saw in a picture on the internet that he said "looked like his wife when she was young." To what end he wanted to meet this girl nobody is sure, so we just assumed he was a perv. Then there were the people from an NGO that shall remain nameless that really wanted to find some way to work with Tammy but which she wisely avoided. You could tell in a couple of minutes that these guys were worthless... a bunch of hippies and travelers trying to set up self-perpetuating projects to justify their group's existence. I tuned out immediately after they started talking about the utility of geodesic domes. Jeremy and Rich have some more first-hand experiences I'm sure they'd be happy to share.

If you ever need a bit of a reality check about how good you have it then by all means visit Haiti. I've never had someone ask me if I can take them in my checked luggage before. It's hard to believe that the U.S. and Haiti are on the same planet, let alone a short distance apart. And believe me... if you need confirmation that these are literally different worlds, nothing is as striking as staring out your airplane window as you leave Port-Au-Prince and then seeing the endless golf courses of Miami less than two hours later.

What we experienced mostly as observers is a situation that seems to have no foreseeable resolution. As Tammy will attest, things now are not that much different from before the earthquake in Cite Soleil. The U.N. presence seems necessary in order to maintain what little peace there is in the area, but as with any military presence it breeds a certain amount of resentment among many of the locals, especially those who have been subject to round-ups or other rough tactics. Food distribution and water supply continue to be problems for the area; basic infrastructure needs must be addressed before anything else can be discussed. There are schools available where kids who are brave enough to resist the temptation of the gangs can learn English and other subjects, but there seems to be nowhere for them to apply that knowledge after graduation. We're talking about a place where workers don't wear eye protection when they're welding because they feel that they won't live long enough for it to matter. The kids use rusty nails as play things and spend much of their days throwing rocks at each other. Most of our friends have never gone beyond the hundred yard radius of the Boston area... when they would ask if we were staying at Visa Lodge it was almost with a sense of awe. Elections mean gang warfare; candidates funnel guns and money to the gangs that support them so the gangs can intimidate rival areas into voting for their candidate or not voting at all.

If you want to contribute to a project that you can be certain will directly help a community in Haiti, please consider donating to Help Tammy Help Haiti (http://www.helptammyhelphaiti.com). Expenses have risen since the earthquake and more money is needed for the completion of the medical clinic. The donation link on the website is currently not working, but feel free to contact Tammy at tammy@helptammyhelphaiti.com for details on how you can donate. You may also want to consider Doctors Without Borders who were the only other group we saw working in Cite Soleil.

Anyhow, enjoy the pictures which I mostly stole from everybody else. Fair warning, some of them may be a bit unpleasant. Besides the ones of Rich, which should go without saying. Here's the link to the album:

Helping Tammy

Take 'er easy,
Dave

Fun With Meds

2010-07-23T09:00:00.000-07:00

Hey everybody,

As some of you may know, I will shortly be heading to Haiti to work with Tammy's charity but mostly so that I have something new to lead with at dinner parties.

I have a group of very generous friends who were kind enough to contribute small donations to my medical supply fund, which in most cases was just enough to karmically offset their purchase of a ticket to see Avatar in 3D. As proof that I didn't spend all the money on hookers and booze, I offer you this:

That's right, that's my bed. Try to take in the majesty. It's a view only a lucky few have had the privilege of enjoying... and by "lucky few" I mean the cleaning lady. Speaking of my bed, I've had this persistent stain that I haven't been able to clear off my bedspread for months.

First of all... what the hell is it? Secondly, how do I get rid of it? I've tried Shout and Tide with bleach, I've applied detergent directly, I've scrubbed it in hot water with a toothbrush (don't worry, not mine my roommate's)... nothing. It's the Rasputin of stains. Somebody please give me some suggestions. But I digress.

Back to the topic at hand... supplies. In case you are interested, here is a list of things I have packed for the trip: 32 lbs. of epsom salts, 8 bottles of non-aspirin pain reliever, 6 bottles of ibuprofen, several hundred gauze pads of different sizes, 3 boxes of pedialyte pops, 6 cans of first aid spray, 5 bottles of pink eye relief drops, 12 rolls of elastic bandages, 4 rolls of athletic tape, 1 sledgehammer, 1 mallet, 2 framing hammers, 9 masks, 3 pairs of work gloves, 3 pairs of latex covered gloves, and 6 tubes of Lotrimin anti-fungal for ringworm.

By the way, I'd like to thank Carlee for helping me out with the shopping. You know you have something special when you can yell "Hey... I need something for ringworm!" at someone across a crowded drug store. That's what you get for asking me to pick you up at the airport.

Anyhow, I'd like to take this last bit to thank those of you who contributed to the cause. Please know that what you were able to give has gone directly to the purchase of these supplies which in turn will go directly to the hands of those who need them. So a big thank you to: Jason, Grace, Brighty, Woody, Kim, Mom, Deep, Deanndra, Sarah, Tom, John, Cindy and Eric, Paul, Nonna and Auntie, Carlee, Pam, Kit and Pat, Sue and Uday. I'd especially like to thank Jake... I think his $3.89 is really what put me over the top.

I'll keep you all posted as to how things go.

Take 'er easy,
Dave

Help Tammy Help Haiti

2010-01-21T09:58:00.000-08:00

Hello everybody,

As some of you may know, I spent some time a few years back volunteering with the relief effort in Khao Lak, Thailand after the December 26th tsunami. Among the many remarkable people I met during my stay was Tammy Babcock, a Canadian native with the heart of a lion and the mouth of a sailor. After returning home, Tammy decided that she would continue her philanthropic efforts by founding a charity to help the people in the slums on the outskirts of Port Au Prince. For the past couple of years, Help Tammy Help Haiti (http://www.helptammyhelphaiti.com) has been involved in several projects in Cite Soleil, including construction of a water tower that was completed in summer 2009.

I realize that you are probably being bombarded by media reports about the earthquake and solicitations for donations by notable charities like Oxfam, Save the Children, Red Cross, The Clinton Foundation, MSF, and many others. I encourage you to give what you can to those organizations since they are on the ground right now trying to provide immediate relief. But if you are interested in contributing to a small organization, I urge you to consider donating to Tammy's charity. Your donation will go directly to helping the people of Cite Soleil in the rebuilding effort which will take place over next few months and years, on immediate clean-up and rebuilding and on long-term projects such as the medical clinic that Tammy's team was in the process of constructing but whose funds the UN has now understandably withdrawn in order to deal with the current emergency. Donating through the site is simple and even a few dollars will go a long way.

Tammy will be heading to Port Au Prince at the end of January, assuming they have resumed civilian flights, or soon thereafter. Once on the ground, she will be coordinating relief efforts in Cite Soleil. As soon as a volunteer initiative can be organized, I plan on joining Tammy to help in whatever way I can.

For more information and to make a donation, please visit http://www.helptammyhelphaiti.com

Take 'er easy,
Dave

A slice of Delicate Pie...

2009-12-16T09:12:00.000-08:00

I laughed, I cried, it was much better than "Cats." Plus there were free beers backstage.

When you cover Zeppelin, you have to bring your A game. I don't have an A game, it's more like a C+ game, so it's good that I have my little bro to cover me up on the guitar, along with a kick-ass rhythm section and a blistering lead singer. Still, I have to say that for our first gig we sounded pretty good. Here's one of my favorite clips, a groovy cover of "Custard Pie..."

The rest of the gig can be found here...
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Delicate%20Pie&search=tag

We got the video straight through the soundboard, which really doesn't convey the way the audience was going mental. I think there was some fainting, perhaps a trampling incident or two. Next stop, O2 arena...

Ichigo Ichie

2009-09-27T04:43:00.000-07:00

I like Japan. The cab drivers wear white gloves and they have beer in vending machines. The only people who jaywalk are tourists. They have toilets that automatically spray water up your butt and play music so people don't hear you blowing ass. Awesome.

I flew in to Tokyo but went straight to Kyoto on the bullet train to meet up with Lee. He was there for the Aikido world championships in which he was supposed to compete but ended up tearing a ligament in his thumb during practice. Important note: Aikido is the martial art practiced by ass-kicking renaissance man Steven Seagal.

"People constantly mistake me for George Yoshinaga."

Unfortunately, during the tournament I never saw anybody's arm broken backward or their trachea torn out of their neck. For those of you that have never watched competitive Aikido, I'll summarize it for you. Basically, one guy goes after another guy with a dildo and tries to hit him with it, and the other guy tries to disarm said dildo, and both guys try to throw each other to the ground. Strange sport. I was lucky enough to watch a couple of days of this homo-erotic dance courtesy of Lee and his teammates. If they could only incorporate the teabagging that's invoved in Jiujitsu, then you'd really have something. We also were able to see demonstrations of Kendo (sword fighting) and Naginata (polearm fighting) at the Budo Center.

On our first night in town, Lee and I met a Japanese guy named Masa at the bar in my hostel and invited him out with us for the night. Well, it's more like we decided we needed an interpreter so we forced him to come out and booze it up with us, the poor bastard. Lee had never had sushi in his life. He was actually thinking about giving up on eating fish until we went to a sushi conveyor-belt joint and took down 24 plates. Lee made us go back to the same place every night we were in Kyoto. We then hit the bars and ended up in this small sake bar run by a cackling fiend named Mr. Ichi. Somehow we ended up being joined by a couple of hipster types from Osaka, and every time Masa would say he didn't want any more beers we'd say ok and buy another round. Like I said... poor bastard. He seemed to end up liking us anyway and taught us the saying "Ichigo Ichie" which has something to do with an auspicious meeting or making new friends. Here's how Masa later explained it via e-mail: "One of terms that explain spirit of tea ceremony. The one that knowledge with important desire that it is meeting that is never, possession of host and guest of both kind faithfulness, and intersection of today's one meeting through life was taught." So I'm glad we got that straightened out.

It seemed as though most of Japan decided to vacation in Kyoto while I was there because 95% of the tourists were Japanese. And if you like shrines and temples, this is the place for you! Luckily as a city it's not too big so it's easily walkable. I really liked it from the get-go... once you get out of downtown there are height limits on the buildings and you can still stumble upon some traditional houses here and there. There were quite a few women walking around in traditional meiko outfits. The people were friendly, the vibe was mellow, the surroundings were beautiful... I could've easily spent a few more days there. I think you'll see what I mean from the pictures. Lee's team ended up with a good showing in the tournament and we had another big night out with his teammate Richard before leaving for Tokyo. Which is like going to another planet.

If you like amber hair, cartoon porn, girls with lots of makeup wearing mini-skirts and boots, and neon lights, you will love Tokyo. Lee was on a mission to pick up some manga (Japanese comic books) for his niece with the only requirement being that she likes dogs so it has to have dogs. Sounded easy enough, so we went to Akihabara (electric town, with all the crazy neon billboards) that is home to one of the biggest manga shops in Tokyo. It was indeed impressive... there were seven floors of manga: two for regular comics and the rest for manga porn. And let me tell you that is some sick shit! Just think of the sickest, weird, fetish stuff you can come up. Now double it. If you still can't picture it, don't worry... I can help. There's girl-on-boy, girl-on-girl, boy-on-boy, guns, plants, animals, chicks with dicks, aliens... and that was just the third floor. They even have anime porn videos playing throughout the store on big screens. Lee didn't even want to ask about dog comics because he thought they'd give him something involving bestiality.

And all around Akihabara we had these girls coming up to us dressed like french maids or schoolgirls handing us flyers to go to their cafes where girls dressed like french maids or schoolgirls wait on you. And close to our hostel in Asakusa they had stills from the porno movies they were showing at the theater posted right in front of it! Porno still shots in public! Did I also mention the cuddle pet stores, where you can rent a puppy or a kitten for an hour so you can cuddle with it? And the love hotels in Shibuya? This town is f'ing crazy!

The manga search didn't go too well as you can imagine. We went through a few other neighborhoods, had some beers here and there, ended up as the only foreigners in a tiny, super-smoky yakitori joint where they stuck us in a back corner with a plywood table, then had an unsuccessful attempt to sing karaoke at 3 am with a couple from Barcelona.

Lee went home the next day, which unfortunately for him meant he missed one of the six annual Sumo tournaments they have in Japan. If you think sumo is just a bunch of fat guys stomping around and running into each other... you're wrong. The sound of man boobs slapping together as two titans collide in the middle of the ring is something I won't soon forget. And the Japanese go absolutely apeshit during these matches. Well, at least for the 10 seconds that they're actually fighting.

On my last day in Tokyo I woke up early to hit the Tsukiji market which is the largest fish market in all of Japan. It's a full-on experience when you're half asleep... it's the size of four or five football fields with carts zooming all over the place, a slick film of fish juice all over the ground and a bunch of Japanese people yelling at each other trying to buy wholesale tuna. Oh... the tuna. Walking around that place was tuna porn. I wanted to smother myself with it. There are sushi restaurants outside the market where you can get the fresh stuff. Nothing like $70 worth of sushi at 7:30 in the morning. I'll probably end up with mercury poisoning after this trip. I guess that ruins my chances of being cast in a David Mamet play.

So I'm back home now which means you won't have to worry about me hassling you with posts for a while. Here's a video of some of the random stuff I saw in Japan...

Randomness in Japan from DB13 on Vimeo.

Lucky for me, I managed to get back in time for the Folsom Street fair. Where else can you feel out of place because you're not wearing assless chaps? We were walking by some weird kinky bondage thing featuring a dominatrix whipping a tied-up naked guy with an enormous shlong when this guy in front of us who is trying to take a picture with his iPhone turns to his buddy and asks "How do you zoom in with this thing?" You gotta love San Francisco.

Anyhow, in case you're interested, here are the pictures. Don't worry, they're only from Japan... I didn't have my camera at the fair.

Ichigo Ichie

Take 'er easy,
Dave

P.S. If you want to see more of the Aikido/Kendo/Naginata video or more of the Sumo Tournament, here are the links.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1FwQ2ERAdI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZQqeSSYeuE

The Marriage of Vincenzo

2009-09-21T02:07:00.000-07:00

First thing's first... apparently Roger Moore is not dead. Although judging by this picture they simply figured out a way to animate his skeletal remains (thanks to Kendall for the image).

On the way to Koh Samui for my buddy Vince's wedding I decided to stop for a couple of days in Phuket to visit my friend Mui and to take a side trip to Khao Lak and Koh Kho Khao. I'm not going to go into detail about that part of my trip other than to say it was immensely gratifying to see people living in the houses we worked on.

I will, however, go into detail about what Mui is doing on Phuket and why you should care. A few years ago Mui bought some land on Phuket in an out of the way area in the center of the island. Ever since, he's been working on a project to develop the land on his own using his own funds. The plan is to use the land for two reasons: a small school for poor children to learn English and computer skills, and a dormitory for terminally ill children from the Thai countryside that would like to see the ocean before they die. He has already begun construction and has architect's drawings for the buildings. Mui's hoping to have this thing finished up by next summer, at which time you can expect to be blasted by me with a bunch of emails. Mui is not looking for money or donations (he may have a sponsorship lined up though he wants to finance this on his own) but what he's going to need are volunteers. It shouldn't be a tough sell, trying to help poor and sick kids on a tropical island, but you never know with people. Anyhow, you've been warned.

From Phuket it was on to Koh Samui for Vince's wedding. What more can I say about Thailand, especially the islands? I consider this country my third home after Italy and the U.S. I love the street Som Tam (and Larb Moo for you JW), the fresh fish, the gorgeous beaches, and even the general chaos and randomness. Most of all I love the smiling, friendly Thai people who laugh at you when you're mangling their language. Well, except in places like Samui where they're so beaten down by asshole tourists that they stop trying. But even there all it takes is trying to order something that's not on the menu (or maybe doesn't exist) and the smiles break out again.

Of course, there are plenty of things to hate in Thailand, mostly tourist-related. There are the douchy backpackers who come to the islands, buy some fisherman pants and linen shirts, then blast Bob Marley to show you how alternative and counter-cultural they are... just like all the other backpackers. There's the people riding around on motorbikes with no helmets, or shirts, or shoes, like there's some kind of Thai forcefield around them that magically protects against cranial injury. And there's the constant parade of fat old (and young) white guys with young Thai chicks.

Sometimes I can't figure this place out. There is no porn, and even the Thai Maxim magazine is kid stuff compared to the U.S. version, but you walk down the street for five minutes and are propositioned 12 times for a massage with a happy ending. The day of the bachelor party we chartered a speedboat to Koh Tao for some snorkeling and diving and the dive instructor was telling us about how they organize a yearly "shagaboard" where they charter a yacht for a week for some exclusive clients, load it up with 10 Thai girls, and then proceed to take the clients out diving and shagging. He even let us know which massage parlor on Samui gives free hand jobs, all with an amusement that I found kind of sad. And Samui is tame compared to other parts of Thailand like Bangkok and Patong in Phuket (no ping pong shows allowed on Samui).

I can't say we didn't take advantage of some of what the island had to offer the night of the bachelor party. I know that may seem somewhat hypocritical after the previous paragraph, but I can assure you that we didn't partake in anything that wouldn't be kosher in any western city. I will let you select the events of the evening from following choices:
a) Attended a ladyboy cabaret
b) Frequented a girly bar
c) I was challenged to a dance battle at a nightclub at 3 AM by a crazy, angry Thai girl
d) We lit an auspicious lantern on the beach for Vince
e) A quiet evening discussing the book "The Secret" by Rhonda Byrne
Which one doesn't belong?
Luckily, I didn't have my camera with me. Actually, that's more lucky for Vince, even though they didn't allow pictures anyway in the girly bar. Would've been embarrassing for Vince to be photographed when those girls were diving in after the ping pong balls in his pants. Good thing no one recorded this on any sort of mass medium that is publicly available.

I also got a chance to train at WMC muay thai on Lamai Beach, which was great except for the part where they paired me up with a 6'6" guy from New Zealand who repeatedly punched me in the face. Although the puffiness in the pictures is probably due more to the bachelor party. I've found that drinking several M150s counters the effects of the Changover... no swollen hands and feet the next day! But I digress. A couple of the Contender tv show guys train at that gym so it must be decent... Dzhabar from season one and Eli from season two whom I saw fight when we went to the stadium on Saturday night. He absolutely kicked the shit out of some poor Thai guy that he outweighed by at least 20 pounds. Here's some video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=InDqZcQy6eM

Anyhow, the whole reason we all came to Samui was for Vince's wedding, which was fantastic. They kept it small, maybe about 20 people or so, and they had it on the beach right in front of the resort where most of the wedding party was staying. I felt a bit sorry for Vince since he made the stylistic decision to sport a tux for his wedding on a tropical island. When I patted him on the back his jacket felt completely soaked through. He did make quite an entrance, however:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8yC3yLFQb1U

The two highlights of the evening for me were a) Michaela's dad dressing exactly like Jackie Treehorn... I wanted to ask him if he had a personalized notepad, and b) the introduction to palinka, which is apparently a Romanian grappa made from plums. Brutal stuff. Good times were had by all.

Without further ado, here are the pictures:

The Marriage of Vincenzo

Take 'er easy,
Dave

My 200 dollar cup of coffee

2009-09-14T00:42:00.000-07:00

I was in Hoi An sitting at a streetside vendor having a cup of coffee and minding my own business. These two women are gabbing away in Vietnamese when one of them turns to me and starts speaking in English (kind of) asking me where I'm from and what-have-you. We're chatting away for a few minutes, and just when I let my guard down she says "Come to see my shop!" Aw, shit. For those of you that don't know, Hoi An is the tailoring capital of Vietnam. There are probably over a hundred shops that will make you just about anything you want to wear... all you have to do is point to something in a magazine and you can have it the next day. Suits, jackets, shoes, shirts... The D.A. would go crazy here.

Anyway, next thing you know I'm with Emma at her shop across the street getting the business end of a measuring tape. I didn't even want a freakin' suit, I just wanted some linen pants for Vince's wedding. She's yapping away, talking some crazy shit in English then Vietnamese to her minions, pinching my cheeks, hugging me, and I think I just bought a suit, two shirts, two ties and a pair of pants for 200 bucks. Of course they take credit cards! "I make you look like James Bond!" Which is good, unless it's Roger Moore, seeing as how he's dead and all.

Hoi An is a riverside colonial town that is composed mainly of tailors, souvenir shops, restaurants, and hotels. It rained pretty much nonstop for 4 days while I was there, so I got to watch a lot of cable TV. I enjoyed watching Black Hawk Down in the original English version with an overdubbed Vietnamese woman doing all the voices. There was one three hour break in the rain that I used to visit the 8th century Champa ruins at My Son, but to be honest the motorbike ride there and back was the most exciting part of the trip. I came to Hoi An via Da Nang, and I think my Vietnam vet friends will be happy to hear that there's a Hyatt regency resort going up on China Beach across the way from the old U.S. air force base.

I did take in another excellent cooking class where I learned how to make Cha Ca and Pho from scratch. We got to visit a farm where they grow herbs and vegetables, and where this insane old Vietnamese woman served us tea. She was talking to herself for a while, then yelling at us, then staring off into space. Then she started yelling at her dog because it was climbing on the furniture, so I said something like "I think that dog has no idea of the consequences if he misbehaves." So a couple of people laughed and the woman thought we were laughing at her and started going nuts and our guide had to scramble to get us back to the van.

I also managed to memorize the script that all the street kid vendors use to sell you stuff... "You buy bracelet? Tiger Balm? Where you from? Do you have any coins for my collection?" They all come up and cycle through that same routine. I can't figure out what the angle is on the coins.

So the night before I'm set to fly back to Hanoi I go to pick up my clothes from Emma. Everything fits great... except the jacket. It looks like the sleeves were stitched to the shoulders by someone with Parkinson's. When I point this out to Emma, she just looks at me and gestures like I need to iron it out. Iron out my ass! I start pointing out the other jackets around the store and how they don't have this sort of poofy shape to the shoulders and she continues insisting it just needs ironing and then yelling at me in Vietnamese. I know I'm not going to win this argument because a) I'm a giant wuss, b) I already paid so I have no leverage, and, most importantly, c) she has scary foot claws. I'm not joking... her toenails extend to about half an inch beyond the end of her toes and they look sharp, like raptor talons with nail polish on them, or maybe it's dried blood. Whatever they are, it's freaking me out. So fuck it, maybe I can get Ang's tailor to fix the sleeves for me when I get back home. All I know is I got completely railroaded by a tiny Vietnamese woman into buying a mangled suit that I don't even need. I am such a jackass.

My next destination was Sa Pa, a mountain town known for its hikes in the northwest of Vietnam. To my eyes, it looks like the French got a hold of this place because it reminds me of an alpine village. I was on a two-day trip with four girls and a Vietnamese guide named Hung which took us through mostly minority hill towns belonging to the black H'Mong and the Dzay people. You might recognize the H'Mong from the pictures, the women wear all black and are constantly harrassing tourists trying to get them to buy trinkets, blankets and whatnot. They are freakin' persistent... one of them followed me around for about 15 minutes as I was walking around the town at a distance of five feet, our conversation consisting of her saying "You buy?" every few seconds and me saying "no." She even waited outside one of the shopts for me to come out so she could start in on me. They should have these people working on cold calls, not selling blankets. It was like the hill tribe version of Glengarry Glen Ross.... some village elder yelling at them to put that tea down, because tea is for closers.

We were told by our guide not to buy anything from the H'Mong, especially from the kids, because the Vietnamese feel like it perpetuates their cycle of poverty. Instead of sending the kids to schools, which are funded by the government, the families will send them out to sell trinkets repeating the same thing over and over again (it's kind of faint, you may have to turn up the volume)....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jXpBPlySOE

The government also wants them to stop having 10 or 12 kids per family and limit it to two. Well, good luck with that, because I dont' think they have cable up in the H'Mong villages. Although the Dzay seemed to have quite a few satellite dishes, but that's because they're really dialled into the homestay business.

Ethnic minority fun facts: 20% of the population of Vietnam is non-Vietnamese. There are 53 ethnic minorities spread throughout Vietnam. We spent the night in a Dzay village in a homestay hosted by Mr. Chin and his wife Doan. I don't remember a lot about the evening, except I learned "Moot, Hai, Ba, Zho!" which I think means "One, two, three, Go!" and "Chum pan chum" (I think) which means "100 percent". Yes, I am your international cultural envoy, ladies and gentlemen!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7H3wWbyuTQ

Sorry about the crappy quality of the video, I was in no condition to screw around with the settings. Mr. Chin doesn't speak any English but he does speak the international language of booze. Hung told me that they host travelers every day, sometimes as many as 20 at a time. If that's true, his liver should be on display somewhere.

The hike through the area around Sa Pa was outstanding. I've not been gifted with particularly flowery language, so I'll let the pictures do the talking. The trek was relatively easy... the upshot of having trekked in Nepal I guess. Wait... there is no upshot. Screw you Mark.

I had one last day in Hanoi and all I wanted was Bun Cha. I found a stand in an alley a few blocks from my hostel where the old lady serves up unlimited amounts of food for 15000 dong, which is about 80 cents. The only drawback is that whenever I sit down I feel like the oldest one at the kids' table. I barrel into everything like Will Ferrell when he has the dart in his neck in Old School... the Vietnamese people around me shaking their heads as they give me about a three-foot radius of eating space. Between that and the Banh My Pate, I was a happy boy.

Anyhow, I never thought I'd be looking forward to going to Thailand to get away from noise.

Here are the pics:

My 200 dollar cup of coffee

Take 'er easy,

Dave

Hijacked in Hanoi

2009-09-08T00:58:00.000-07:00

It was my first day in Vietnam and I had no idea why I was there. I was sitting alone in Hanoi on the south side of Hoa Kiem Lake minding my own business, in a sort of bored and anxious malaise. I must be getting old because leading up to this trip I'd felt more anxious than excited. The last few years I've rarely traveled alone... I'd almost always been meeting up with one of those jackasses I met in Khao Lak, usually Mark and Rich. Not this time, though, as Rich is still waiting for that plate to be put in his head and Mark is doing something either illegal or immoral or both with his soon-to-be Asian bride.

I'm contemplating all this and whether or not it'd be interesting to see the embalmed body of Ho Chih Minh when I look up and am suddenly surrounded by four giggly girls looking at me and gabbing away in what I presume to be Vietnamese.

"What's your name?"

Ok, here it comes. What am I gonna get sold today? They decide to sit down, two on either side of me, and begin the barrage...

"Where are you from?" "Are you by yourself?" "Where do you live?" "Do you like Vietnam?" "What is your job?" "Do you know Liverpool football?" "How old are you?" "Are you married?" When I answer no it gets all quiet, like I told them I have aerially communicable herpes or something. Then they start barraging me with questions about why I'm not married when I'm so old, and one of them says she's 21 and she's engaged, and then they ask me if I like girls, then one of them suggests I should go to the tribal "Love Market" in Sapa to find a bride, which they all think is the funniest thing ever. And on and on for half an hour. They explain to me that they are local university students and their teacher instructed them go for walks around the lake on Sunday mornings to practice their English with foreigners. Then one of them says "We want to take you out for ice cream."

Yeah right. I'll be walking along the street with these four evil elves and a van will pull up and someone will clobber me over the head and dump me in the lake. But I do like ice cream, so I say ok. We walk a couple of blocks away from the lake and away from the street, into this courtyard packed with people where I am the only non-Vietnamese person. I know this because I'm a head taller than everybody else. I'm like a human lighthouse. The girls insist on buying me ice cream, then drag me across the street for a free Fanta for "Teens only."

It's been about an hour so the girls have to leave but first they want their picture taken with me by the lake. We walk back over there and happen to see a photo shoot going on with three tall Vietnamese models sporting some sort of traditional dresses and walking along the side of the lake. The girls get all excited at this and run over to talk to the photographer. Then one of the girls comes over to me, grabs my arm, and says "Stand over there" meaning where the three models are standing. So the next thing I know I'm getting my picture taken with these three models... people are stopping and staring at us, taking pictures on their phones, the girls are going mental, and I have no idea what the hell is going on. So make sure you look out for me in the next issue of Vogue Vietnam. I'd been in Hanoi for three hours.

What else can I say about Hanoi? I've never seen this many scooters in my life. Crossing the street is like playing human Frogger. Everybody's honking their horn all the time. I've been told that's because people don't use their mirrors and they honk to let everyone know they're coming. Apparently it's illegal to drive in Vietnam if your horn is not working. The street food is outstanding... you can sit down on tiny plastic stools on just about any street corner and find something good to eat. Mostly I've just been pointing at stuff which I hope is chicken, and usually ends up containing a high amount of gristle and/or cartilage. I'm enjoying the Bia Hoi which is fresh beer for about 20 cents a glass. I took a cooking class where I learned how to make a typical northern dish called Bun Cha which is spring rolls and barbecued meat in a kind of soup with rice noodles. Apparently you're supposed to eat pho for breakfast, and Vietnamese people end up eating about 5 or 6 times a day when it's all said and done. I also have to say that Vietnamese coffee kicks ass... it has a strange kind of spice flavor to it. I went for a tour of the Hanoi Hilton, which really is more of a Ramada Inn at best. My favorite part was the pictures of the captured U.S. pilots playing volleyball or decorating a christmas tree... like they're on holiday or something.

Here's a video of one of my moped taxi rides. Pretty tame but you may get an idea.

I've been trying to say a few words here or there, mostly hello and thank you, but the locals seem pretty indifferent to it. The kids are the friendliest, they'll run up to you and say hello and giggle and run away. I've been called "handsome boy" a couple of times which is understandable. Some things are so powerfully obvious that they cross cultural lines.

I happened to be in town for the September 2nd independence day festival where it seemed like the entire city of Hanoi came out to celebrate. All the streets around the lake were closed down... kind of anyway... with only scooter traffic zooming around the pedestrians and with several stages with music and whatnot. Lots of posters of Uncle Ho around the place.

Also, apparently I have one of those recognizable faces, or all bald people look alike. People I've been compared to so far on this trip:
Karim Benzema
Randy Couture
Zidane (again. What is it about me and French footballers?)
The guy from Prison Break. I've never seen Prison Break so I don't know who that is. I'm not sure I want to be associated with prison anything.

I did manage to take a few days trip out to Halong Bay as well, which is a bay made up of around 3000 limestone islands. Again, it's probably best described in pictures, but I've never seen anything like the expanse of limestone outcroppings popping out of the ocean which seem to go on forever. I won't say it was much of a cultural experience, you had your requisite band of drunken partying English dudes, but who cares when you're on the beach with a 333 beer in your hand?

Half the people I've met seem to be English teachers who taught in South Korea. I met a woman from Massa-Carrara which is about 10 minutes from Viareggio, a French-Canadian guy who hit a pig with a motorcycle and has an irrational hatred of people from Ontario, and on the train ride to Da Nang I rode in a compartment with three people from San Francisco.

By the way, Dong jokes never get old... they're like poop jokes. I could hang out in this country just for that.

Without further ado... here are the pics:

Hijacked in Hanoi

Take 'er easy,
Dave

All that for four minutes?

2009-06-18T10:06:00.000-07:00

I think those were Carlee's exact words when I told her the fight was gonna be two 2-minute rounds. Then I had to hear about how she trained for months but it was for a marathon and at least that took a few hours. I thought she'd be psyched about my doing something that lasts four minutes. I can't win.

I'd like to thank everybody for their support for the last couple of months and especially for their patience and understanding of Hungry Dave a.k.a. Asshole Dave. I weighed in the day of the fight at 175 which is about 15-20 pounds lighter than normal. I haven't taken a decent dump in months. After the fight I went out for a burrito and beers, then buffalo wings and beers, then I went home and drank all the beers in my refrigerator, ate a large salad bowl full of cereal and some leftover steak. There's a long story in here somewhere... blood... sweat... tears... mostly the other guy's... but I can't be asked to write it right now.

These videos were taken by a friend of my opponent's
Round 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOXqW2gTYmM
Round 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrhqZNk_nmQ

Here are the ones Tony and Ang took for me
http://picasaweb.google.com/thetravelsofdave/AllThatForFourMinutes?feat=directlink

I also posted one of the videos to the Facebook. Feel free to share... I know there are a lot of people out there who would like to vicariously punch me in the face.

Bunkerd and me

From All that for four minutes?

I have to say that hitting someone with intent is a unique experience. I recommend it. Although I kind of feel badly about it because it turns out that Anthony is a really nice guy. Now all I have left is the gig with the band and I can take the rest of the year off.

Take 'er easy,
Dave

Horizontal rain and a bunch of old cathedrals

2008-10-03T17:19:00.000-07:00

Greetings everybody,

When one of your friends asks you if you want to visit them in Iceland, how can you say no? I went as a guest of Mica and Ingi, both of whom I know from Khao Lak. Unfortunate things seem to happen to Mica whenever I’m around, like the time Dean almost lit her on fire with gasoline, or the time we kept getting washed up into the reef when we were snorkeling, or the time the longtail boat we were on almost capsized. This time it went much more smoothly… she just passed out in the bathroom after we spent too long in the hot tub at Ingi’s parents’ house.

Here are a few of my immediate observations shortly after landing in Iceland: Iceland is cold. Iceland is windy. There are a lot of blond people. Iceland is also windy. Yes, I know... piercing. Geographically, Iceland is unlike anyplace I have ever visited... it's volcanic rock and mountains and ice and grass. It looks like the kind of place where they could stage a fake landing on Mars and you would believe it. It's hard to picture somebody 1000 years ago saying "You know what? Norway is just too temperate for me. This place is perfect!" And yet they did.

Here are some other random facts you may or may not know about Iceland:
-Icelandic women only dress in four colors: black, light black, dark black, and dark purple. Sometimes gray. If you see a woman wearing a floral pattern... tourist. Or it’s Mica.
-Iceland is almost completely green, with its ample power coming from geothermal and hydroelectric plants. This is why everyone has their heat turned up to 90 degrees 24/7 and one of the top Icelandic pastimes is hanging out in your hot tub.
-Iceland lies on both the European and the North American land masses and is quickly expanding by an inch per year.
-Liquor stores are owned by the government and close by 6 pm.
-You can visit the President of Iceland's house, and by visit I mean drive right up to it and walk around. Not big on formality over there.
-Christmas is a huge deal in Iceland. Everybody covers their house up with lights and decorations. There are 13 Santa Clauses, each known by a different character trait. Personal favorites include "The Sausage Snatcher" and "The Window Peeper." Apparently, what passes for “Santa Claus” in Iceland is known as “homeless guy” in the U.S.
-It rains horizontally. Only tourists try to use umbrellas.
-Viking Beer

If you're ever in Iceland, I highly recommend making a stop at the Blue Lagoon spa. Nothing quite like hanging out in an outdoor mineral pool for three hours in the sun/rain/sun/rain/hail/rain/sun/rain/sun. It’s a strange feeling being in a hot pool while you’re being pelted with freakin’ ice missiles. On the plus side, you can enjoy a silica face mask which makes your skin feel soft and supple afterward.

From Iceland it was on to Italy, where I had volunteered to act as tour guide for Lee, Anna, Rich and Mark who were coming down from England for a few days. Il Bresci (my dad) managed to fight through the disappointment he felt when he found out that three of my friends are vegetarians in order to unleash one of his typical gastro-intestinal assaults. After the pre-dinner cocktail and the three different bottles of regional wines with dinner and the Vin Santo with dessert, he unleashed his pride and joy, his homemade liqueurs, like Limoncello, Nocino, Lemon Milk (don't ask), and a bunch of other herbal and/or fruity stuff. Lee made the mistake of saying that he'd never tried grappa. Il Bresci left the room for about thirty seconds and showed up with ten different bottles in hand, each a different type of grappa. For those of you that don't know what grappa is, it's made from the distilled remains of grape skins that are left over after you've made wine. It tastes about as good as it sounds. To the surprise of absolutely no one who’s ever hung out with English people, we then went out for a couple of pints.

One of the great things about having an engineer as your dad is that you can tell him you'd like to drive around Italy for a few days and he'll lay out an itinerary for you with detailed routes cross-referenced with specific pages in your guidebook for each destination. We decided to skip the usual major cities and head for less-traveled locations like Arezzo, Perugia, Orvieto and Massa Marittima, just to name a few.

The next five days consisted of the five of us traveling in a Passat station wagon through various towns in Tuscany and Umbria watching Lee eat anything that resembled any sort of pizza-like substance and hearing Rich complain about something or other. I don't know why we even needed the guide books… every Italian city's major attraction is a church. Mark would be reading the lonely planet and we'd ask him where we should go in, say, Todi, and he'd reply "The cathedral is meant to be quite nice." Oh, you don't say? What a surprise! That being said, I have to admit that all the cathedrals were quite striking. The ones that stand out the most to me are the one in Todi for the mural of the day of judgment and the one in Orvieto for the intricate etchings on the outer walls. Oh, and the one in Massa Marittima because we got kicked out for walking in during a baptism.

Oh no, I think I left the oven on

We weren't shy about trying different types of regional foods whenever we could lay our hands on them, from porchetta in Assisi, to pastries in Perugia, to primi piatti in Foligno. Porchetta is basically a whole pig that’s been de-boned, filled with garlic, rosemary and salt, and roasted over a spit for a day. Even the vegetarians were drooling at that one. Lee required a pizza fix by 10 AM every day, and I bought at least two loaves of bread daily. Unfortunately, we were traveling during the vendemmia (grape harvest) so we couldn't find a vineyard that was open for wine tasting. It worked out though, because we decided to undertake our own extensive independent wine tasting through the various box and/or screw top wines of Italy. Taste the magic!

I also recommend driving around Italy if you ever get a chance. Once you get into the country there are some wicked windy roads running through the hills and through vineyards and olive groves, which is nice as long as no one gets carsick and as long as you don't have some ungrateful bastards in the back seat pointing out when you happen to take a wrong turn or go through a roundabout a couple of times.

After that it was off to London for a few days to stay with Stefano. Those of you that are friends of Stefano will be happy to know that he recently bought a house, which means he'll no longer be bathing with a garden hose. Also, I managed to be in town for London's yearly sunny day, which I of course spent working inside a data center. P.S. If you ever have to drive in London, DO NOT USE GARMIN. You're better off asking people for directions rather than taking the "fastest route" through central freakin London. Hey... 12 miles in two hours... but I got to drive by Trafalgar square! Woo hoo!

It’s always tough coming home after getting into travel mode, so after an 11 hour flight into SFO I'm waiting in line at passport control wondering how many times I'm going to get searched, because apparently I look like a recent Al Qaeda recruit. I get up to the front and hand the guy my passport and watch as he looks at my passport picture, then looks at me, then at my picture again, then at me, and I'm thinking this is the time they take me to the back for a cavity search. Finally he says "You look like a before and after from one of those hair replacement ads, except backwards. What happened? Do you work on wall street or something?" Ha ha ha!!! Welcome to the United States mothafucka!

On the plus side, I came back to work to find this in my cubicle:
http://gallery.me.com/the.white.house#100216

And, without further ado, you can find the pictures from the trip:

Horizontal rain and a bunch of old cathedrals

Take 'er easy,
Dave

Four days in Havana

2008-06-07T22:09:00.000-07:00

Greetings everybody,

If you had told me a couple of months ago that I'd end up in Havana in early June, I would've said that I didn't think urinating in public was a deportable offense. It's not… my lawyer assured me… so let's say that it started with an email, which is how pretty much everything starts nowadays, whose subject line simply read "Cuba." Next thing I know, I'm on a flight from LA to Cancun to meet up with Jimmy W and Jeremy DP. We don't really call him that but I'll use any excuse to work DP into a story. Anyhow, when three guys are single, have disposable income, a "why not" attitude, and honestly nothing else going on, that's how things happen. We were set to spend four days in Havana, who the veteran Jeremy assured me would be plenty of time. Let's say that, theoretically, you hadn't held a real job for about four years. A four day trip to a foreign country would seem really short, right? Not that I know anybody like that, but work with me.

We had to spend one night in Cancun because our flight to Havana didn't leave until the next day. I won't go into much detail about Cancun, other than to say it made me think of Las Vegas on the beach, and I don't mean that in a good kind of way, I mean that in a culturally vacuous kind of way. Nothing but giant resort hotels and chain restaurants as far as the eye could see. Being stuck on a one-hour shuttle bus ride with six rednecks talking about how they can't wait to party at Senor Frog's will sour you on a place fairly quickly. Let's move along.

Our flight to Havana the next day was delayed by six hours, which they didn't tell us until we'd already checked in. Cubana airlines… bringing all the efficiency of Communism to the skies! We ended up spending some quality time in the lovely Cancun airport where we met an Australian couple, Glen and Margo, who were also on their way to Havana and a Cuban woman named Sobe who lives in Scranton and carries around pictures of herself and her husband from the society pages of the local newspaper. The highlight of the day was the flight itself, a one-hour test of faith on a Russian YAK-42 (no joke). Some of the features of this engineering marvel included free-floating seat backs and seat bottoms (because you don't want those pesky seats locking in place… who knows what could happen?), airline peanuts that expired in 2004 (which I didn't notice until after I ate them), an ice-cold substance akin to liquid nitrogen blasting underneath all the seats, and a lovely gasoline smell permeating the entire cabin shortly after takeoff. I must've looked concerned because the guy sitting next to me felt the need to reassure me with the comforting words "Es normal." Ah yes, thanks for that. This began a conversation that was to be like many of the conversations I had in Cuba, where people thought I could understand everything they were saying just because I was attempting to speak Spanish. I managed to piece together that he was the trumpet player in a salsa band called Charanga Habanera that tours all over the world. Here's a clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3eip9hWMFGQ

The flight itself was mercifully only an hour long, after which I proceeded to get stopped four times by Cuban passport control/immigration/customs. Wait a minute… you're supposed to get harassed on your way out of Cuba, not on the way in. I couldn't figure it out... I even had a sweet Fidel-like beard going. How the hell did Jeremy, who was dressed like a cross between a 1950's CIA operative and a German tourist, not even get asked one question? He even came and stood right next to me while I was being questioned by the cops and they completely ignored him. Then I was taken to a corner where the guy opened up my bag, rifled through my stuff, and said to me "Solo ropa?" What's he expect me to say at that point? No officer, there's a kilo of heroin in there somewhere, keep looking. Yeah "solo ropa."

We were greeted at the airport by Jeremy's Cuban contact Felix, an auto mechanic with a ferocious porn mustache, who had arranged for us to stay at a casa particular, which is the term for a house that's licensed by the government to take in boarders. We had to catch a cab into town because apparently Felix had gotten in trouble last time Jeremy came to Cuba for giving him a ride to the airport and ended up spending a night in jail. So we got a ride from Ricardo, a cabbie whose mother was an English teacher, who, with a laugh, promised to take us to drink "the warmest beer in Havana." It was at a roadside stand where Jeremy proceeded to introduce Jimmy and I to Cristal, one of two beers tourists can buy in Cuba for 1.15 CUC each. This is probably a good time to explain how currency works in Cuba. There are two different types of money: Cuban Convertibles (CUC) that are supposed to be for tourists and roughly the equivalent of a U.S. Dollar, and Cuban pesos which are the currency for the locals and equivalent to about 4 cents each. That's the theory anyway, but CUC have become so pervasive that there's basically a mixed dual economy going on. Felix is an auto mechanic for the government telecommunications company and he explained that he's paid in both currencies, although it's only 28 CUC and 600 pesos per month. Basically, we just spent approximately one day of Felix's salary for a beer. Of course, if Felix wants to buy beer, he can choose from another selection of beers that he can pay for in pesos rather than CUC, but they're for Cubans only.

Driving through Havana by night is a little bit eerie. We weren't staying in a tourist area, Cerro is a residential neighborhood, and no one was either walking or driving along the streets. The only things you can focus on are the buildings as you drive by, and that's when you really start to notice the beautiful architecture of the city itself. I'd read that Cuba has been heavily influenced not only by Spain but by France as well, and it's easy to see parallels to Madrid and Paris in construction all around the city. By the time we reached our host Elizabeth's house, I think Jimmy had already taken a hundred pictures. Elizabeth runs a casa particular which by the looks of it means she kicks her two daughters out of their rooms whenever she can find boarders to stay at her house. We each paid 30 CUC per night, which when you add it all up equals Felix's yearly salary for just four days of hosting three goofy Americans. That's a pretty sweet deal even when you factor in the cost of fumigating Jeremy's room. It also explains how she can afford a satellite dish that is tuned in to Telemundo 24x7.

Our first day we decided to head out and explore on foot, which took us through Cerro north toward the water to Vedado and eventually to the more touristy Havana Vieja. Seeing Cerro in daylight definitely gave a different impression than the previous night's drive-through. I don't think dilapidation is the right word, but I'm not sure how else to describe the state of most of the buildings as you walk through this part of Havana. I can't speak for the interiors, maybe they're all like Elizabeth's house where it's beaten up on the outside but hooked up with new tile floors and paint inside, but all you can see from the exterior is this incredible architecture that looks as if it hasn't been maintained for the last 50 years. That's the feel the entire city gives you as you stroll through it, with the old Chevrolets and boxy Russian Lada cars zooming around and these beautiful buildings covered in cracks and peeling paint. It's as if at one point they decided "okay, that's it" and stopped taking care of things. The people themselves just seem to go on about their business, or lack of business. The sidewalks are filled with people hanging around, talking with friends, or leisurely walking from one place to another. Don't get me wrong, there are people working in Havana, but it's also obvious that there are a lot of people not doing much of anything.

We visited the Jose Marti memorial, a tribute to one of the first Cuban revolutionaries and its chief national hero. He was also a writer, poet, translator, diplomat, journalist and painter. He died tragically, shot in the ass by his own troops. Look it up. Okay, not really, but he is dead, otherwise he'd be about 170 years old, which would be a pretty good advertisement for the revolutionary lifestyle. Anyhow, the monument is situated next to the Plaza de la Revolucion where all the big May Day festivities are held every year and across the street from the Ministry of the Interior building that has a giant portrait of Che Guevara on its facade. That's one of the first things you notice in Havana… the billboards that you would normally expect to be selling you an iPod or some other crap you don't need are instead covered with propaganda, from quotes by Che and Fidel to pleas to free the Cuban Five. There are no chain stores of any kind, only small corner shops or larger nameless storefronts. Combined with the worn-down buildings it served to give the city a heavy, gray feel, which is one of the main reasons that Havana is so photographically fascinating.

Our first conversation of any significance with a local came after a tropical rainstorm later that afternoon when we managed to find a courtyard near the Malecon (the waterfront) that served ice-cold Cristals and Bucaneros. We sat next to a table of three young Cuban guys, one of whom started talking to us in broken English and introduced himself as Fish, or as he pronounced it, Feesh. Fish and his two buddies were enjoying small boxes of something called Planchao, which looks like a juice drink you'd put in your kid's lunch, but is actually rum that tastes like something you'd use to light a barbecue. Fish and his friends asked if they could join us at our table because they didn't want the police to see them talking to tourists from another table for some reason and Jeremy bought a round of Planchao for everyone... they only cost 1 CUC each and as such are cheaper than beer. At this point Fish started asking us questions about where we're from, why we're in Havana, and, of course, how we like the Cuban women. This was his launching point for a Shakespearian soliloquy whereby he explained how if you want the "fucky fucky" from the Cuban ladies, you've got to have some spending cash. I think the best way to explain the course of the conversation is to watch a bit of magic that Jimmy managed to capture in this exchange between Fish and Jeremy.

feesch!

Next thing we know, three of Fish's lady friends appeared out of nowhere and sat down one-by-one next to Jeremy, Jimmy, and me. This was the "check please" moment of the conversation. On the way out a couple of the enterprising young ladies followed us, but neither one was willing to meet Jeremy's asking price of 100 CUC so we went on our way.

Later that night Felix took us to the baseball stadium to watch Cuba's Red team play against Puerto Rico in a tournament of Caribbean countries. Felix paid for our tickets which cost him 3 pesos, or about 12 cents U.S each. The stadium was practically empty; there were more security officers than fans; so we sat in the front row box seats/metal lawn chairs down the right field line near the visiting team's dugout. We enjoyed typical Cuban ballgame fare such as pork sandwiches with vinegar, salted popcorn, and, for some reason, a bag of nearly indestructible rock candy. After a couple of innings, one of us recognized that a coach on Puerto Rico's team was Juan Gonzalez, who used to play professionally in the U.S., won the MVP award twice, and turned down a 140 million dollar deal with the Detroit Tigers back in 2001. He was never known as the smartest ballplayer in the world… his nickname is Igor. Anyhow, we might not have noticed Juan except for the fact that, from the field, he was flirting with one of the security officers, a girl who was about 50 feet up in the stands dressed in the classic Castro olive drab military uniform. He kept looking over at her and trying to get her attention with some kind of weird clicking sound, like he was calling over a cat. Maybe that's how the magic happens in Puerto Rico. Or maybe when you're a ballplayer worth millions of dollars you just stop giving a shit, I dunno. They're yelling things at each other in Spanish and she comes down to talk to him for a couple of minutes, so we tell Felix that this dude is Juan Gonzalez and he made millions of dollars in the big leagues. Felix laughs and calls over one of the security guys and proceeds to tell him what we just said, and next thing you know, chaos ensues. About five or six different people, security guards and whatnot, descend right in front of where we're sitting, call over Juan Gonzalez, and start giving him all sorts of shit. This is all going on in Spanish so I'm only picking up about a quarter of what they're saying, but I did manage to hear the security guy asking Juan if he made all that money why doesn't he just buy Puerto Rico. After a couple of minutes it's obvious that Juan is getting more and more annoyed, and he's standing about five feet away from us, and we know that he knows that we are the guys who called him out. I'd like to point out for the record that Juan is about 6'5" and weighs about 250 pounds, not to mention that it looked like the entire Puerto Rican team had been dipped in a vat of steroids. I don't know exactly what happened next because this really fat chick decided to lean over the railing directly in front of me to talk to the right fielder for the Puerto Rican team, and when I tried to video this whole scene I got caught by the security girl who thought that I was trying to video the fat chick's ass. So Juan is arguing with a couple of security guards while the fat chick is chatting up the right fielder and I'm trying to convince the security girl that I wasn't taking pictures of anybody's ass. It was total chaos. They eased up on Juan after a few minutes and he even gave an autographed baseball to the security girl, whom I got to sit with the three of us and take a picture. A few minutes later she came back over to us and asked if we could delete her picture because she didn't want to get in trouble if some officials looked at the pictures as we were leaving the country, so I did. A couple of innings later, Juan was back at it with this new move where he played with his lower lip and making some sort of baby sound... it was a weird scene. Apparently, it takes more than that to knock Juan off his game... he's a pro. Oh yeah, Cuba won the game in extra innings on a walk-off home run.

The next day we took a cab ride directly to downtown Havana and walked to the Floridita, the bar where the Daiquiri was invented and one of Hemingway's favorite hangouts. There's some sort of cult of Hemingway in Cuba, not so much because the Cubans themselves think he's special, but more because they realize that tourists do. If Hemingway ducked into a place once to take a dump it'll be advertised as one of his "haunts." I tried to order the Papa Doble, which is a daiquiri with a double shot of rum named for Hemingway because he supposedly drank 13 of them in one sitting, but the bartender wouldn't have it. He simply said "Daiquiri" and looked at me with glazed-over eyes that said "If I hear the name Hemingway once more I swear I'm going to come in here with an AK-47 and murder everyone at this bar." So I ordered a round of daiquiris. Three rounds later, we were well on our way to our longest day in Havana.

We spent most of the day walking around Havana Vieja, which, due to its popularity with tourists, has been the beneficiary of a directed effort by the Cuban government to restore many of its historic buildings. Calling it the tourist area doesn't ring right when you've seen the likes of Khao San Road in Bangkok or Thamel in Kathmandu or even Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco. I mean, it's the area where most tourists end up at some point or another because of the beautiful buildings and its relative concentration of hotels and restaurants, but it is nowhere near the chaotic scene of your typical tourist area. As I mentioned earlier, there are no chain stores or shopping malls, only a series of small stores and outdoor boutiques along some of the more popular walking streets. There are quite a few museums and plenty of restaurants, such as the one we ducked into during another rainstorm where an acoustic guitar quartet played Cuban music while we sipped mojitos and ate Moros y Cristianos (black beans and rice).

Later that night we made our way over to the Malecon, which seems to be the place where the locals hang out at night. The waterfront was filled with people sitting on the sea wall, drinking beers and rum, dancing salsa, and propositioning the tourists (i.e. us). Contrary to popular belief, I don't spend a lot of time thinking about hookers so I'm not quite sure how to explain the relationship between some of the local women and male tourists... maybe Fish was right in how he explained it. I don't know if I'd classify these women as straight-up hookers, although you do get directly propositioned, but it seems like most of them are hookers of convenience. What I mean is that they see a tourist and think it's an easy way to make a few CUC, or they'd sleep with you and then ask you for money afterward. Maybe that's a subtlety that doesn't make any sense to anybody except me, but I'm not sure how else to explain it. To be fair, after talking to some of the locals they explained that some women are just looking for guys to take them out to clubs where they don't allow Cubans unless they're accompanied by tourists. All in all, the best strategy is to simply be careful or stay away altogether.

We stopped and sat along the Malecon for a while drinking Cristal and Bucanero and observing instead of being observed. As a tourist in Havana you sometimes feel as if you're either being ignored or being hustled so it was nice to sit back and watch for a while. We (meaning me, the official translator) ended up talking with a couple of university kids who are the only people we met in our time there that said anything negative about the Castro government. After a couple of hours on the Malecon we left these future poster boys for Amnesty International, jumped in a cab, and someone (me) said to the cabbie "24 hora cerveza!"

Where we ended up next I can't exactly say… I didn't exactly give specific directions. It was somewhere along the water but maybe three or four miles up the road in the middle of nowhere. There was what looked like an outdoor bar and when I looked at the cab driver he said "aqui" so we paid and got out. The bar turned out to be closed, so our only other option was a small, well lit shack that had a sign declaring "Pollo Ditu." We'd seen a few of these around town and it's the closest thing Havana has to a fast-food chain. Lucky for us, they served beer and some sort of deep fried chicken nuggets/parts that are purple on the inside. If you were ever curious about the type of people that hang out at a 24-hour chicken pit in Havana, wonder no more. We met Gaston, the English-speaking Pollo Ditu employee whose wife is an opera singer, Ariel the security guard who for some reason works a 12-hour shift guarding a pollo pit, and a couple of young ladies who told us their names were Doris and "Mylove." Under normal circumstances we probably would've been a bit wary of hanging out with a girl named Doris who assured us more than once that her boobs are real and another girl who called herself Mylove with a tattoo of the Playboy bunny right above her butt, but Pollo Ditu at 4 am with Bucanero and Planchao is not what I would consider normal circumstances. Besides, there was nothing in the Lonely Planet specifically warning us against Playboy tattoos. So we stayed out all night drinking beers at a chicken pit in the middle of nowhere with the two girls, the chicken guys and a security guard, with me acting as the translator for all conversations. Again, I'd like to point out that my Spanish is fantastic… I mastered the art of verbally putting question marks and exclamation points in front of my sentences. It was daybreak when we decided we should probably head back to our casa, and before leaving Ariel gave us his phone number and said we should come to stay with him and his family next time we're in Havana. My Spanish is better than I thought, although if it was really good I wouldn't have ended up with a male security guard's digits.

As you can imagine, we didn't do much on our last day that didn't involve sleeping, although we did get a farewell dinner feast cooked by Elizabeth. My main disappointment was that we never got to go salsa dancing, but I can't say that we didn't have an eventful four days. I'm not going to make any extensive pronouncements on the good or evil of communism... I was only there for four days, so what can you really deduce about a place in that amount of time? Some people were afraid to talk to us and others had no problems with it. A security officer didn't want her picture to be recorded with tourists. Felix got thrown in jail for giving tourists a ride to the airport. So in that sense, the government is very restrictive about tourist/local interaction. Economically, no one in the city seems particularly well-off, in fact I'd say that most people are poor, although it seems as though everyone is at the same level of poor. I saw much fewer homeless people in Havana than I would on a typical afternoon in San Francisco. On the other hand, I was propositioned for sex a lot more than I would be on a typical afternoon in San Francisco (unfortunately), which shows a certain level of desperation. Not that they'd have to be desperate to proposition me. Wouldn't hurt though. Anyhow, the city itself is gorgeous in such a unique way that I think it needs to be seen to be appreciated. On the other hand, as I mentioned earlier, the beauty of the city has not been maintained at all and most of what you see can best be described as worn or faded which, honestly, weighs on you emotionally after a while, especially if you think of how beautiful it could be. Not everyone sees it the same way as I do... we met an old chain-smoking Italian man named Franco at the airport that said he'd traveled all his life working in the textile business and has never seen a place as beautiful as Havana.

Havana's not going to stay closed for long, though. They're opening up a Benetton store in Havana Vieja. We went to the Bodeguita del Medio in Playa del Carmen which is absolutely nothing like the original in Havana. It has its own merchandise store where they sell items like "I heart Che" coffee mugs. Can you imagine Che Guevara walking into a place where they sell "I heart Che" coffee mugs? His head would probably explode. But it's only a matter of time before they open one up next to the original.

If you've made it this far, you have my congratulations and my condolences. I didn't think I could write this much about only four days, but Havana gives you a lot of subject matter to work with. If you want to check out the accompanying pictures, here's the link:

Four days in Havana

Any pictures that are visually interesting in any way whatsoever were stolen from Jimmy.

Take 'er easy,

Dave

Bay to Blazers

2008-05-21T18:20:00.000-07:00

Hi everybody,

Last weekend was the annual Bay to Breakers, which this year was unofficially renamed in honor of my brother. For those of you who don't know, this is a 7 mile "race" across San Francisco from the bay to the ocean. Maybe the first 3% or so is an actual race... the rest is, to quote Nedermeyer from Animal House, "individual acts of perversion so profound and disgusting that decorum prohibits listing them here."

I tried not to get any pictures of old naked guys, but I can't promise anything if they're somewhere in the corner of the frame or something. Actually, the number of old naked guys was down this year for some reason. Don't worry, they made up for their lack of numbers by wearing green fluorescent hats so if you saw them out of the corner of your eye you couldn't help but look in their direction. Nudists are very enterprising.

Pictures are here:

Bay to Breakers 2008

Take 'er easy

Valentine's Day Pillow Fight

2008-02-17T18:24:00.000-08:00

Because nothing says "I love you" like beating the shit out of strangers in a public square.

The pictures will speak for themselves...

Valentine's Day Pillow Fight

All I've Got Are These Damn Nepalese Coins

2008-02-02T17:06:00.000-08:00

I actually did bring back some coins from Nepal. I'm going to try that line next time I'm at the laundromat.

Anyhow, The most important thing to do when you get to a new country is get acquainted with its booze. Nepal is home to Everest beer, which has a picture of the famous sherpa Tenzing Norgay on the label and tastes like it contains one of his urine samples. Or you can try Tongba, a hot, alcoholic, millet-based beverage. Yes, I know what you're thinking, after drinking Tongba I am also surprised that the millet craze has not swept across the western world. But you need some booze in you to try and absorb the chaos that is Kathmandu. There's pretty much no order to the traffic, cars look like they're about to plow into each other, people are walking in the middle of the streets, it's a free-for-all. Most of the buildings look as though a bomb went off in them, and there are beggars and touts everywhere, especially in the tourist district. There's garbage in the streets, and, if you're lucky, cow shit. Lots of it.

Traveling to Nepal made me very much appreciate what I have. It's a very, very poor country. There are a lot of people living in squalor, without clean water or electricity. Many of the dwellings that you see are made of cinder blocks cemented together, with corrugated tin roofs that have rocks on top of them to keep them from flying off during high winds. People bathe in the cold water outside if they bathe at all. The main river that runs through Kathmandu is overrun with garbage. You walk through parts of the town and you feel like you're walking through the set of some post-apocalyptic movie. I felt like a kind of voyeur. It's weird to walk through there and think that pretty much anytime you could take off and go back to your world but that all the Nepalis have to deal with it every day of their lives. What can you do though? Give to Oxfam I guess, volunteer when you can, vote your conscience, and try to be a responsible consumer. Or, ignore it and just be happy that beer is cheap and your room only costs $2 per night. We went with option B. We stayed in Kathmandu for a couple of days because the airlines lost my luggage, but after that it was off to Pokhara which is the launching point for treks into the Annapurna conservation area.

You have to be in top physical and mental shape to attempt a trek to Annapurna base camp (ABC) at 4280 meters (over 14,000 feet). I... am neither. That probably explains why I spent most of the time trying to figure out how I could throw myself into a canyon without doing too much harm, just enough to warrant a helicopter rescue. I should've done more research on what "trek" exactly means. But I knew one thing for sure, that no matter how bad a shape I was in or how much I was struggling, Rich would be worse. I found comfort in that. Plus I was looking forward to growing a mountain beard. Of course, any positivity was erased on the first day when Rich and I encountered our first set of Nepali steps. And, since the trek was his idea, everything was Mark's fault. He was itching to try it again since he tried to get to ABC 9 years ago but couldn't make it because he hurt his back.

I don't know if I need to get into detail about what the trek was like, you can look at the pictures, but if I was keeping a journal it would go something like this:
Day 1: Fuck you Mark.
Days 2-5: See Day 1.
Day 6: Nice mountains. P.S. Fuck you Mark.
Days 7-9: I can't believe it's taking me three days to walk back.
Someone needs to send some civil engineers over to Nepal. Apparently, if you want to go up 200 meters, you can't just go up 200 meters. You have to go up 400, then come down 300, then go up 200 more, and come down 100. It's bullshit. We had to hike 6-7 hours a day in these conditions, with a pack. I kept thinking that I could've been on a beach somewhere. Cold showers? Check! Plus, let me tell you something about squat toilets. When you're up at altitude... water freezes! Hey! What do you know? That means if you don't properly flush your poop down the squat toilet, it leaves a frozen surprise for the next person who comes in. Just a heads-up to those of you that might not know. Through it all, Rich and I tried to keep our spirits up by coming up with different ways to kill Mark. At first they were fairly mundane, but as we got colder and as the air got thinner they got more complicated. I think the last one we came up with is that we'd kill him and then slice him open so we could sleep inside him when it was cold, like at the beginning of Empire Strikes Back. Yeah, I know it's gruesome. We were bitter.

I'm not telling you that it wasn't beautiful, or that we didn't have any fun. I mean, I got to climb to the top of Poon Hill! It's a misnomer, by the way, all you can see from there are a bunch of mountains. I looked through the conservation area map and found a Titi Lake and a Nymphu Monastery, but unfortunately they weren't on our route. In Tadapani, Rich was threatened with a dull knife by a 12-year-old girl. On the trek we met a Dutch girl named Karin who traveled most of the way with us, although she did bring our beard factor down. I got to dance with a bunch of Nepali porters. I got to see a monkey steal a lady's bag. We met up with some Buddhist monks on the trek that taught us some card tricks. By the way, being a Buddhist monk seems like a sweet gig. They didn't have to pay for anything at the lodge, they were walking around with iPods and digital SLR cameras, and they were getting all the food they could eat for free. You should see these guys at breakfast. Disciplined my ass.

We did have some excitement on the trip. Mark finally made it to Annapurna base camp this time, but only stayed about an hour because he got altitude sickness. For those of you who don't know, altitude sickness occurs when you ascend too quickly without acclimatizing, and severe altitude sickness can kill you. He got a really bad headache and then started puking up his masala tea, at which point the Nepalis said he had to descend immediately to a lower altitude. So he had to go down to another village... in the middle of a blizzard. Santos, his porter, led him down. As any good friends would do, Rich and I stayed at base camp. Hey, we wanted to see the sunrise over the Annapurnas. Besides... blizzards are cold.

Anyhow, without further ado, pictures are here:

Nepal

Dave

The Tube of Caulk

2007-01-12T23:15:00.000-08:00

In case anybody was wondering what life is like with Jimmy in Bend, Oregon in January...

-----Original Message-----
From: Dave Bresci
Sent: Friday, January 12, 2007 2:42 PM
To:
Subject: RE: Frozen pecker

Well it goes a little something like this....

Back in October we were replacing the shingles on Jimmy's roof (side note: we never finished. There are about 6 stacks of shingles still up there). As you may or may not know, you need to use roofing caulk to seal up the edges around the roof under the shingles. So Jimmy's up there working and he has this tube of caulk that keeps rolling down the roof and getting in his way. Jimmy gets pissed off pretty easily, so he fires a few f-bombs and sticks the tube of caulk in the closest convenient location he can think of... On top of an air vent. He later explained to me that he was under the impression that the vent would be at least a quarter inch narrower than the diameter of the tube of caulk. Apparently, it's a quarter inch larger. Jimmy, by the way, is a licensed contractor.

So... Fooom! The tube of caulk goes shooting down this air vent into who knows where. At this point Jimmy unleashes a stream of epithets reminiscent of the dad in "A Christmas Story." Anyway, after regrouping we decide that we need to resolve this issue ASAP. This is where the combined clever genius of Dave and Jimmy comes into play. The first thing we tried was lowering a string line attached to a weighted film canister with crazy glue on the bottom, letting it rest on the tube of caulk (which was about 12-15 feet down) and letting the glue dry so we could pull it out. Needless to say, this didn't work. We tried the same thing except substituted the crazy glue with Liquid Nails, which is some bad-ass shit. Negative. At this point one of our neighbors, Jay, comes by, sees us on the roof and asks what we're up to. Jimmy tells him what happened, and after Jay stops laughing he offers to help. He works for the power company, he's on his lunch break, and he has a big truck full of bad-ass tools. So he and his partner climb up on the roof with this giant spool of what looks like copper wiring, maybe about an eighth of an inch thick. He cuts off about 15 feet of it, winds one end so it looks like a corkscrew, and proceeds to spend the next 20 minutes trying to screw his way through the bottom of the tube of caulk with this copper wire. Unsuccessfully, of course.

That night we discover what the air vent was used for, which was for intake to the bathroom sink and the laundry room. At this point we have no running water in either spot.

The next day I had this genius idea that I would attach a screwdriver with duct tape to the end of a 20 foot section of PVC, then try to puncture the bottom of the tube of caulk in order to then twist and pull it up. I still think this might've worked if maybe I'd used a bit more duct tape. As it happened, I punched my makeshift PVC spear down into the abyss only to have it come back up without the screwdriver. Time for drastic measures. We rip the sink and the vanity out of the bathroom so we can get to the wall which cointains said air vent. We saw through the drywall until we have access to the pipes, then saw through what looks like the correct pipe. We were right, it's the pipe with the stuck tube. Unfortunately, the tube seems to be about a foot below floor level as best we can tell since we can't really see. Turns out I probably shoved it down another few feet with my PVC contraption.

Anyhow, we got busy with work and didn't get around to calling Roto-Rooter until about a week after the original incident. The guy comes out and looks at this hole in the wall with a section cut out of an air vent, then goes back to his truck to get one of those cameras they have. He pokes around in there for about five minutes, then tells me that there's nothing he can do because it looks like the tube opened up and the caulk dried inside the tube. He says the only thing we can do at this point is bust through the concrete floor, dig out to the bottom of the pipe and replace it where the problem resides. It's not as hard as it sounds, he says. Then he charged me 85 bucks.

The next day I go to an equipment rental place to get a concrete saw, which is a bad ass piece of equipment if you've never seen one. We cover the entrance to the bathroom with plastic and Jimmy jury-rigs a sort of a ventilator using a shop-vac and some PVC because the bathroom has no windows and, therefore, no ventilation. We split the duties this way: he does the cutting and I stay in the hallway to make sure the plastic covering stays sealed so cement dust doesn't go flying everywhere. So Jimmy gets geared up with goggles and a big ventilator mask and goes in to make his first cut. He's gonna cut out a big rectangle and cutting through concrete is fairly slow. After about five minutes he comes out of the bathroom covered in sweat and dust and says he made the first cut. He rests for a few minutes then goes back in there for the second cut. The same thing again for the third cut. When he's in there for the fourth cut he seems to be taking a little longer than usual. He finally comes out, pouring sweat, and stumbles down the hallway through the living room out to the front yard. Now, all I can see from the hall is the doorway, so I see him go to the left of the door, then stumble across the doorway off to the right, then come back in the house an plop down on the recliner. I go up to him and see that he is soaking with sweat and that his eyelids are twitching, so I start asking him "Are you ok? Are you ok?" He doesn't say anything and his breathing starts to turn to snoring and it looks to me like he's passed out. I grab the cordless phone and yell at him, "Dude I’m going to call 911!" He opens his eyes halfway and slurs "What for?" I lift him up with one arm over my shoulder and take him out to the front yard where he lies for about fifteen minutes in a semi-catatonic state, occasionally reviving himself for a drink of water. I went back into the bathroom and discovered that I couldn't see two inches in front of me from the cement dust and that it was about 120 degrees in there. So he either had poisoning from the dust or he overheated or both.

After the dust settles I decide to take a sledgehammer and try to crack through the cut floor. After about 15 minutes of sporadic hammering, I've probably got about 4 square inches cracked off the slab. Jimmy's in no shape to take over, so we decide to return the saw and rent a jackhammer. It takes about half an hour but I finally break up the 2x3 foot section under which we're going to dig. By the way, using a jackhammer is not as cool as it sounds. It's fun for about two minutes until your arms start to get sore. Then it just really sucks.

After we cut through the wiring (because lucky for us it was reinforced concrete) we decided to call it a day. We didn't get around to digging out the dirt for another couple of weeks, and by that time I'd gotten used to doing everything in the kitchen sink. Anyhow, I dug through the dirt to get to the pipe and when we cut it out we found the fucking screwdriver was sticking through the bottom of the pipe.

So that's how a tube of caulk cost Jimmy about 500 bucks. And we still don't have a sink in the bathroom.

-----Original Message-----
From:
Sent: Friday, January 12, 2007 12:50 PM
To: Dave Bresci
Subject: RE: Frozen pecker

Nice, a poopcicle. I hadn't heard about the caulk incident, what's that all about.

-----Original Message-----
From: Dave Bresci
Sent: Friday, January 12, 2007 12:43 PM
To:
Subject: Frozen pecker

So Jimmy just finished painting the bathroom the other day and gets a wild hair up his ass about tiling the floor. As you probably know, we've been without a sink in the bathroom for three months because of the tube of caulk incident, so he'd have to tile the floor anyway before we put a new sink in.
Of course, in order to tile the floor we have to remove the toilet, which was done last night. So the tiling goes pretty smoothly, after which we both realize that it's going to take at least twelve hours for the mortar to dry before we can replace the toilet. Last night the temperature in Bend was 1, with a wind chill factor of -12. Needless to say, I've been taking a leak in a one gallon water bottle for the last day. Dropping a deuce presented a slightly larger problem... I drove to Costco this morning to use their can. Jimmy, on the other hand, in his words "went from Defcon 1 to Defcon 5 in about three minutes" and ended up taking a dump in the garage in the 5 gallon bucket he used to mix the mortar yesterday. He said he couldn't believe the amount of steam coming out of that bucket after he took it outside.

I love this place.

The World Cup and the Running of the Bulls

2006-07-01T22:53:00.000-07:00

Chaos. Mayhem. Madness. Booze. And it was only day two in Koln...

That's pretty much how it went down for the entire three weeks in Germany. Bouncing from one Fan Fest to another in our beat-up Volvo station wagon, we sampled many beers and experienced the unique smells that can only develop when you're camping with three other guys and only showering every few days. Mmm... musky. There's nothing else quite like the world cup experience, though. The way that fans are whipped into a frenzy for their national teams is hard to describe, yet it never really managed to erupt into anything violent. Well, except that one night where we were chased by riot police, and that was mostly because Max and I were curious as to what it's like to be part of a mob of English hooligans. Other than that, all the fans were very civil toward each other, and even when the English eventually lost in Gelsenkirchen the worst thing I saw were some overturned porta-potties.

I'm not sure how participating in the running of the bulls can be a let-down, but that's what happens when you're in Pamplona where nobody gives a crap about soccer and the rest of the world is watching the final between Italy and France. I was told that in Viareggio, my home town and where Italy's manager Lippi is from, there were close to 200,000 people watching the match in the main piazza. I was watching it at the only bar we could find in Pamplona that didn't have its television tuned into a bullfight on a microscopic, static-filled television surrounded by French people. After that, I pretty much had to run with the bulls. I mean, I didn't want to go all the way to Pamplona for nothing. I learned two things from that experience: Bulls are really, really big, and don't count on Max waiting up for you if you're in the middle of a stampede.

Overall, much beer was drunk, many miles were logged, and there were many times when we wanted to kill each other. Other than that, it was great.

Check out the pictures:

World Cup 2006

Barcelona and Pamplona

Take 'er easy,
Dave

A Final Word

2006-03-15T21:28:00.000-08:00

Hey everybody,

I'm cold. I haven't worn long pants or shoes in several months so my perspective is somewhat skewed.

Anyhow, my last few weeks in Thailand were pretty mellow... exactly what I was looking for. I went through some mixed emotions when I stopped working, I felt a bit guilty quitting while the work wasn't quite finished but I knew that if I didn't take some time off then I wouldn't have a chance to do anything fun before I came home. It was tough... I'd put so much into that project that I didn't know what to do with myself once it was over. It was like my reason for being there was finished so I wasn't sure what to do or where to go. I decided to treat myself to a 4-day liveaboard scuba trip, which turned out to be fantastic. The Similan Islands in the Andaman Sea are supposed to be some of the best dive sites in the world and the sea life I saw was spectacular. I have three words for you... Wall of Fish. It just has to be seen. Of course, I came back with swollen ear canals, I must've been somewhat congested because equalizing underwater was extremely painful, so I was laid up for about four days with throbbing inside my ears, which was fun.

I then took off for the other side of Thailand, the gulf, and met up with my old roommate Jimmy on Ko Tao where he and his brother were finishing their open-water dive course. We spent about a week on Ko Tao and Ko Phangan lounging on some tropical beaches and then I came back to Khao Lak to spend my last few days in Thailand. Last Friday they held a party on Koh Kho Khao to commemorate the end of the volunteer work... the houses are finished except for a few details that the contractors need to work on, but villagers have already started moving in. It was exciting and gratifying to see the houses in finished condition, many of the villagers showed up to the party which was my first opportunity to meet most of them. Jimmy was there as well, which in a way made it more real for me because it was a link to home. He took some great pictures, one of which I've attached to give you some idea of what the houses we've built look like. Then it was a 14-hour bus ride to Bangkok and 19 hours of flight+layover and I was home.

So, what do I think after 6 months in Thailand? It's an interesting country. Selling porn is illegal, but selling a girl named Porn is okay. There are two worlds living in parallel, the first and third world. Where else are you going to see a satellite dish outside a corrugated tin shack? There are more pickup trucks in Thailand than in any other country in the world. Everyone has a cell phone, almost no one has a flush toilet or hot water. Many towns don't even have water pipes, each family has to have their own well or cistern. Stray cats and dogs are everywhere.

There's an incredible amount of natural beauty in this country, especially on the beaches and in the jungle, but if you want to see it I suggest you go now.
Thailand is whoring itself out to tourism and it doesn't seem like there are many controls on how it's being done. Air, water, and noise pollution don't seem to be of much concern to the general population. There are plenty of areas designated as national parks, but these are slowly being sold off to the highest bidder, usually a resort. In 10 years' time it's going to be a completely different country, for better or worse.

I'm going to miss a lot of things about it, though. Thai people are incredibly welcoming and friendly... everyone smiles at you when you walk down the street, kids will wave at you from the school buses, people will try to randomly start up conversations with you whether or not you speak the same language... just being back home one day reminds me how different that is from the US, at least California. I'm going to miss seeing a family of 5 piled on one moped or 25 laborers in the back of one pickup truck. I'm going to miss papaya salad. I'm going to miss the relaxed attitude toward just about everything. I'm going to miss the crazy driving. I won't miss Thai pop music.

Well, that's just about it. Sorry I didn't have any more ass stories for ya, but the opportunity didn't present itself. I did moon a guy when I was scuba diving, but he didn't see it so I guess that really doesn't count.

Well there are a few final pictures:

A Final Word

Take 'er easy everybody. As always, the dude abides,
Dave

Khao Lak Asstravaganza

2006-02-14T17:19:00.000-08:00

Pictures are here:

Khao Lak Asstravaganza

Greetings from Thailand, where if one more Thai guy calls out to me "Zidane!" I'm going to punch him in the face then shave my head,

Well, the last few weeks have been mostly focused on finishing the work on the island. We've reached the stage where all the heavy labor is done and the detail work like paint, ceiling tiles, and debris cleanup are all that's left. Strangely enough, I think this may actually have been my most dangerous month. Why? Two
words: Thai scaffolding. I think when they put the scaffolding up they expect the houses to be painted by circus monkeys. Balancing on a 3-inch wide beam 20 feet in the air while painting some eaves under a roof usually involves strategic placement of the ass cheeks, as I've found out. The only thing worse is when we try to build our own scaffolding. Oh... yeah, that's top notch stuff, I'm sure up to the highest OSHA standards. If you're ever in charge of a volunteer construction site, there's nothing better to keep annoying old guys occupied than to put them in charge of scaffolding construction. They'll use up about 3/4 of all the wood on your site, and by the time they're finished you would probably have painted about 4 houses, but it's worth it to keep from standing over your shoulder saying "That's not how I would've done it" or "Why do they do it this way" or "Why don't we have a [insert random tool name that is impossibly expensive or impractical in Thailand here]?"

On the plus side, the houses are rounding nicely into shape and from the exterior a lot of them look almost finished. We're having to move a lot of supplies and equipment around, so the last couple of weeks I've been able to drive the dump truck. That's right... dump truck. You know when you're a kid and you get one of those Tonka trucks and zoom it around your backyard. Yeah, I get to drive a real one of those. Oh baby, you wouldn't believe the turning radius on one of those things! I could probably parallel park it on Lombard St. Okay, maybe not. Still, the point is we're at the stage of construction where a lot of the ceilings and electrical are done, so we just have to finish floors and painting for many of the houses to be in move-in condition.

Actually, we've gotten so much done that a couple of weeks ago they told us volunteers to take a week off from the island so the contractors could catch up. We ended up becoming volunteer mercenaries, kind of like the A-team, working a couple of days each at different projects. We did some beach cleanup, which basically involves waiting for low tide and going out into the water to pick up chunks of concrete and other debris. Man, there are entire houses out there. We had to break an electrical pole into bits and dig it out of the sand underneath a couple of feet of water. It's pretty incredible to think that this stuff was planted into the ground somewhere inland, and that it's been over a year and it's still there. We also worked a day at Thap Tawan moving sand (about as fun as it sounds) and a couple of days at Nam Kem digging septic holes. That is so damn satisfying... knee deep in mud or clay, cursing at a future shithole because the walls are caving in on you, finally getting the concrete rings into place... that's a day's work, baby! Actually, we've gotten pretty good at it... the Nam Kem team asked us if we could come back and dig more but there was work back on the island for us.

It's been hard to keep up morale and keep people motivated the last month since we've mostly been painting, especially the long-termers who know what it's like to do much more satisfying concrete and digging work, so I've been doing my best to try to keep things interesting. In late December, we began to wage a campaign against all the other teams involving serial mooning, or b.a. as it's also known. We started off small... shoving a pair of ass cheeks out of the only functioning window on the shark while two others were pressed against the glass as we passed by Thap Tawan. But then, as the regular moonings became too banal, we tried to raise the stakes. One fateful morning, the planets aligned so that we were able to moon five (5) TVC vehicles on the way to work: 3 from Thap Tawan, the Thaikea truck and the environmental restoration truck. I thought that was the pinnacle, but I was wrong. Soon thereafter we strafed the crew from the Pakarang boatyard. The cool thing about that is that we had just helped them load up a boat on the trailer behind Scott's truck, and the entire boatyard crew was sitting on the boat with nowhere to hide or shield their eyes. It was magical. I may have been overzealous in my pantsing that day because one of the boat crew later claimed he could see my boys, but that is just part of the legend. The next day, on the way back from working at Thap Tawan, we had the first all-female mooning (thank you Bec and Tammy) on one of their trucks, which we later discovered was full of Australian christians and being driven by a pastor.

Then, last week, Dean took the two station wagons in for servicing and gave me the songtaw to drive around. For those of you who don't know what that is, it's basically a pickup truck with an enclosure welded to the truck bed and benches lining the bed so it becomes a passenger vehicle. What it really becomes is the perfect mooning vehicle. There was only one group left to moon, Nam Kem, and I really wanted to come up with something special for them. Then, as if in a vision, it came to me... the Ass Pyramid. One fateful Thursday morning the opportunity presented itself, and we did not let it slip by. With Richard behind the wheel driving like Matt Damon in The Bourne Identity, Luke, Tammy and I formed the first known Ass Pyramid in the Khao Lak area. Luke and I were on the bottom and Tammy climbed on our backs while we passed the first Nam Kem truck and pulled directly in front of them. What the hapless drivers were treated to was a triangular formation of slapping asses for approximately 30 seconds until we sped away. But that was only the appetizer. The main course was when we finally caught up to the big Nam Kem truck. We got at least a good 45 seconds of ass on them. I really don't think they appreciated the coordination and dexterity it took to balance three people on the back of a truck bed while pantsless and using one hand for slapping. Anyway, about a minute after we stopped laughing I got a phone call from Tilo at the TVC office and the first thing he says is "Did you just moon the Nam Kem vehicle?" Apparently, one of the people in the front seat of the truck was one of the Thai bigshots at the TVC and he didn't think it was so funny, so I got an earful about that one and ended up going to Nam Kem's worksite to apologize to him personally. It's not the first time I've made an insincere apology, and I'm sure it won't be the last. I mean, how can you not appreciate the planning and execution that goes into an ass pyramid out of the back of a moving truck?

Undeterred by my slight setback, I set about strategizing on one final magnum opus of mooning which I could pull off while I still had the songtaw. The perfect opportunity presented itself at last Friday night's TVC costume party held at an outdoor restaurant on the main strip. It was a couple of volunteers' birthdays so they thought it would be fun to throw a dress-up party where everyone had to show up dressed like a character from a movie. I didn't really feel like finding an outfit, so I jokingly said one night at dinner that I was just going to show up in my underwear and say I was King Kong. Well, after I thought about it a couple days it didn't seem like such a bad idea, but I thought I should probably do something more than just go in my underwear. So the day of the party I completely smeared myself in Vaseline, which was cool, and then put on a layer of shoe polish to make me more dark and ape-like, or at least that's what I was thinking. Turns out I looked more like "Just crawled out of the sewer man" or "charred corpse man" than King Kong, but it was already done so I went to the party. Anyway, back to the ass. So the party kicks off full swing, probably about a hundred people drinking and sporting some really creative outfits considering resources are limited, when me and seven other people sneak off to pick up the songtaw which was strategically parked only a couple of blocks away. I'm proud to say that we performed the first-ever recorded two-level songtaw seven-ass mooning, with four asses sticking out of the bottom row and three of us (Luke, Tammy and I) on the roof. Rich was driving and basically stopped directly in front of the restaurant honking the horn while we slapped away. I can only describe it as sheer poetry, a crowning achievement of human spirit and vision, really possibly the eighth wonder of the world. I'm not kidding, it was that good. I have it on video.

Anyhow, we went back to the party afterward and I wasn't in trouble, which was cool. Unfortunately, it was at this point that my "outfit" began to cause me some discomfort. First off, no one would come within three feet of me for fear of getting some kind of black greasy concoction on their clothing. Hey, it's not my fault about half the party was wearing white. Secondly, I smelled like shoe polish. Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, my skin was starting to feel a slight tingle that at some point began to turn into a burn. At that point I decided it might be a good time to go home and take a shower, which turned into a 45-minute scrubbing epic to which I sacrificed an entire bar of soap and a formerly light blue towel, now slightly blackened. I can't imagine how I could've gotten that shit off if I didn't have the vaseline on.

I had a plan this week to moon the new volunteer orientation, but unfortunately it was foiled when they decided not to come to the island. I really don't care whether or not I get kicked out of the TVC at this point because I've given them my notice... Friday the 17th will be my last day on the island. I think it has a nice symmetry to it, I started on September 17th. I'm probably going to relax for a few weeks, get a lot of sleep, and then come back to the island for the official dedication ceremony on March 10th. After that, I'll be homeward bound I reckon.

Hope you're all doing well and I'll see some of you fairly soon.

As always, the Dude abides,
Dave

Happy 2549!

2006-01-13T12:26:00.000-08:00

Pictures are here:

Happy 2549!

Greetings from Thailand, where happiness means a hot shower. The year here is 2549, which means we are like 500 years ahead of the rest of you idiots and have far superior technology available to us. The large, public bonfires, exposed wiring and squat toilets are just a ploy to throw you all off. In fact, I am currently writing this message while orbiting around Alpha Centauri in search of minerals to power the new fusion-driven longtail boats. I'm not sure exactly why the year is 2549, but when in doubt, the answer is always "The King."

Things have been going really well on the island as far as the housing construction goes. Friday we finished pouring the 2nd story columns on house 7, and today we poured the final columns for the final house we're going to be working on. I'll have to admit... the Dave got a bit emotional over that one. It's the first big milestone for completing the island project. Also, I love to pour the concrete. Lastly, and most importantly, it means all we have left to do is paint, which is somewhere between listening to Gilson for three hours and rubbing a cheese grater over my face on my list of favorite activities. In other construction news, a few weeks ago I almost destroyed a cement mixer while trying to move it with the Bobcat. The wheels were stuck in concrete, and thinking that brute force always wins out, I just tried to lift it up regardless. The result... a cement mixer minus a front axle. No problem, though, we put the mixer up on cinder blocks, like some kind of redneck mixer. In other island news, I found out a few weeks ago that, since I work on Koh Kho Khao, and apparently three consecutive monosyllabic words are too much to master, people around the office and volunteers from other worksites refer to me as "KKK Dave." On top of that, there's some crazy Thai local that's been hanging out around the worksite with us "helping out" with some of the work. He's a short, chubby, toothless fella who likes to walk around barefoot. Anyway, I was standing around during lunchtime the other day, minding my own business, when he comes up to me, points to my earring, moves behind me, grabs both my hips and proceeds to have mock anal sex with me, cackling all the while. Yes, one of the highlights of the volunteer experience... interacting with the locals!

I found a new place to live which is off the main road but only like a 10 minute walk away. It's huge... it has a front room, a bedroom, and a kitchen, and I only pay about $150 a month. And... it has a hot shower. The first hot shower I've had in two months. Oh, baby... splendiferous. There are a couple of drawbacks to the place, though. Apparently there's some insect wild kingdom shit going on, or maybe they built the bungalow over some sort of indian burial ground or something, because the place is swarming with ants, spiders, cockroaches, caterpillars, and, my favorite, leeches. One night I had a few people over in the front room and when I walk in there after going to the bathroom I see 6 people, grown men and women, huddling to one side of the room and pointing at the wall on the opposite end. I look over to see this large, disturbing arachnid... it had about a 4-inch legspan, and they were not those needle-like skinny legs, they were thick, man! So these guys are all looking at me like I have to do something about it, and I'm thinking "Damn you bitches, I'm cooking you dinner" but it was apparent they weren't going to do anything. I mean, Lee is like 6'1", 240 lbs, used to play rugby so he looks like he's been hit in the face a few times with a cast-iron skillet, and he's standing on a chair like the housewife in one of those old Tom and Jerry cartoons. Anyhow, I go outside and grab my flip-flop so I can smash that thing, and I tried to smack it a couple of times but it would just sprint, and I mean sprint, into one of the corners of the room. So I grabbed two (2) cans of insect spray,one in each hand and layed into the spider. The thing was just laughing at me. At this point, as a last act of desperation, I grabbed this long, thick stick I had in the room, and just tried to beat it to death. I mean, I was smashing this spider, giving it a few whacks with a large stick, and nothing! I thought at one point it was going to take the stick away from me and start chasing me around. Eventually, I managed to stun it enough so I could kill it, but I've been sleeping with one eye open ever since.

As far as the xmas holiday goes, I have to admit that I really enjoyed the holiday season here in Thailand. Why? Because there is no holiday season. No incessant commercials on TV, no near-brawls in the stores, no advertising bombardments on billboards in the street... none of that crap. So, to be honest, christmas day kind of snuck up on me. I was wearing a santa hat all day and when I was in a convenience store one of the Thais came up to me and said "Merry Xmas!" I mean, he literally said "xmas." A couple of volunteers organized a dinner with actual turkey, so about 50 of us turned up at this outdoor bar with a view of the beach for the meal. They even organized to have an elephant come to the party for about 15 minutes, which is not as good as the original rumor that Ricky Martin was going to be there, but still not bad. I decided that, since I could, I was going to go shirtless all day on christmas, and I did. So as not to show bias, I bought everyone on my team the same gift: a bowl of Cup o'Noodles from 7-11. I also gave out 60 eucalyptus nasal inhalers to all the volunteers at the party, just because the thought of giving out 60 nasal inhalers made me laugh. Then I went around and made them all pose for pictures with nasal inhalers inserted.

The day after xmas was the tsunami memorial, which I've had a million questions about, and I have to be honest with you, it really didn't mean that much to me. I mean, I wasn't here when the wave hit and I don't really feel any sort of personal connection with that particular event, even though it's the reason that brought me here. For me, the things that get to me are more like when I was riding on the ferry with Amnat from House 16 in Bang Sak (he lets us use his truck) and he was telling me about how he lost his wife during the tsunami and he was left alone with his two kids, and that anytime I come back to Thailand I'm welcome to come stay at his place. That means something to me, not some kind of dog and pony show. It didn't help any that the ceremony they had in the morning was, to be honest, very cold and unemotional. They set up a stage in Bang Niang in front of the police boat, the weather was blazing hot, and there was one speech by some kind of deputy prime minister that lasted about 10 minutes. Then there was some kind of rugby scrum to place commemorative flowers by the police boat, and that was it. Mica had some very strong negative feelings about that ceremony which were actually published in The Guardian in the UK (http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1674037,00.html),
but honestly I was glad it was short because I was drenched in sweat. The nighttime ceremony, which was the one with the princess and where they lit all the lanterns, got a lot more coverage and is probably the one you all heard about. I didn't go to that one, but the people who did said it was very well done and that the lanterns were spectacular. Still, like I said, for me the anniversary was sort of an abstract thing... I would've been more like a voyeur at the ceremony and not really a participant. One of my friends who is a volunteer was actually a tsunami victim (she was seriously injured and she lost her boyfriend) and she spent most of the day going around to various memorials in the area. Clearly, her experience and her point of view on the anniversary are going to be different than mine, and I know that she had a bit of a rough time with it, so maybe I'm not the best person to ask.

A few days after the memorial I was driving back to my new bungalow, which happens to be up the road from a Burmese camp, when I saw that the road was blocked by some kind of commotion. So I pulled up and saw that there was a truck surrounded by Burmese, and in the back of the truck was a group of white people chucking food and supplies to the Burmese workers. I just turned off my car and sat on the hood for a while, waiting for these guys to finish up. At first I was thinking that it was great that someone was paying attention to the Burmese, who essentially are the cheap labor in Thailand. They set up these aluminum siding work camps and live for months or years in Thailand while supplying the construction labor for most of the projects going on. They only get paid a couple hundred baht a day, at most. It was a bit strange, though, because there were these three white people standing up on a truck chucking food to the outstretched arms of maybe 50 Burmese, and it made for a strange and perhaps a little disturbing visual image. Still, I was glad that they were at least getting something. A few minutes later, a truck zooms by me honking its horn and forces its way through the crowd of Burmese and next to the other truck. An obviously agitated man, whom I recognize as Scott, the boatyard project manager, jumps out of the truck and starts yelling at the people handing out supplies. So I get off my hood and make my way toward the commotion, and by the time I get over there Scott is right in this other guy's face and they're just screaming at each other. Apparently, Scott thought that this was really not the best way to distribute food and that it was demeaning and condescending to the Burmese, and that the way they were distributing the supplies was unfair to those who could not physically force their way forward. Well, the other guy didn't take that very well, and these two are about an inch from each others' face, and I'm thinking there's going to be an all-out fracas any minute. Then they started dropping f-bombs and challenging each other to take swings at one another, so I kind of stepped between them and without really saying anything just tried to pull Scott away from the scene. I think the Burmese were more confused than anything at what the hell these foreigners were yelling about. Scott finally calmed down a bit and got back in his truck, and the other guy climbed in his truck with his people and drove off. Ever since then I thought that I could definitely see Scott's point, even though he handled it poorly, so I wondered if I should've been angry about what was going on instead of just sitting back and observing it. I did think it was great that the Burmese were getting something, but in retrospect there was no need to make a big show of it like that. They could've headed into the camp and dropped off the supplies to be doled out by whomever is in charge there. Still, I just couldn't get fired up about it.

For new year's I took a caravan of people to Krabi in my car, The Shark, which is on its last legs. The back license plate is hanging on by one screw. Two of the inside door panels have come off. The rear windows don't roll down. The front driver's window rolls down but won't roll back up unless you lock the doors. When you brake the steering wheel wobbles. The gas tank plate is off its hinges. The aircon vents in the back of the car don't work. The front passenger seat belt sticks. The stereo is broken. So, really, it's a pleasant ride for all, especially for three hours. Anyway, I won't get into too much detail, but I highly recommend spending new year's on the beach. There was the requisite firedancing, and the requisite Chang, and as for my personal experience... I was a dancing slut. I mean, I danced with whomever would dance with me... men, women, monkeys... I didn't care. I'd have to put it in my top three new year's.

Ever since that night, though, I've been fighting this cough and sore throat which has been dogging me for a few days now. I thought I remembered Jeremy telling me to buy some medicine with a dragon on it because it had opiates in it and would knock you out overnight, so I went to the supermarket and found a bottle of the stuff. So afterward I go for dinner at a small restaurant next to the supermarket where they know me and the guy asks me how I'm doing and I tell him I'm not feeling so well. He says something about taking medicine and I whip out the bottle and show it to him. He looks at it for a minute, moves away for better lighting, continues reading, comes back over to me and says "For lady." Then he starts laughing. He walks back into the kitchen and I hear this chatting in Thai and more laughing, and after a minute or so his wife comes over to me and says "Medicine for lady!" Then she writes out something in Thai for me to take to the supermarket and get instead. So for the rest of dinner I'm getting these sideways glances from the staff, and then a couple of their friends come by and I see them pointing over at me and laughing, so I don't think I can eat at that place anymore. Then when I tried to return the lady medicine to the supermarket they wouldn't take it back. I asked Bum to translate it for me, and when she read the box she just laughed hysterically for a couple of minutes before telling me that it's for a woman's period, which I suppose makes the dragon on the box an appropriate emblem.

So that's what's been going on with me. I'm sure I've forgotten something, but as usual I've written more than I intended. Hope everyone's doing well and...
happy festivus!

As always, the Dude abides,
Dave

Ton Sai Blows...

2005-12-17T13:14:00.000-08:00

Pictures are here:

Ton Sai blows

Greetings from Thailand, where the question remains: How many Burmese laborers can you fit in the back of a pickup truck?

On the subject of motor vehicles, I've had an easier time than I expected adjusting to driving on the left side of the road. The hardest part really is using the stick with your left hand instead of your right. On a road trip to Krabi I kept grinding gears as I was downshifting from fifth to fourth and the crew was giving me all sorts of shit about it. I haven't killed anybody yet, which is sweet, but I ran over a dog in front of the 7-eleven in Bang Niang but I'm sure it was already dead. Nevertheless, my team was calling me "Dave the dog-killer" for a couple of weeks. Have I previously mentioned the lack of respect my team shows me? Just like when I was employed, except without the paycheck. Anyhow, I have my own car courtesy of Mercy Foundation which has been dubbed "The Shark." It's a long, gray, diesel P.O.S. station wagon whose insides have been completely gutted from several months of transporting volunteers. I wanted to paint some teeth on the front of it like those old fighter planes and maybe use the arc welder to stick a metal fin on the roof, but I think Dean plans on selling it when we're done. These are the kinds of things I come up with when given access to power tools and heavy equipment.

I consider myself lucky to have had a consistent crew without much turnover for the last month or so which has made it possible for us to really kick ass on the construction front. We've been pouring concrete almost every day and have some structure in place on every house we're scheduled to build. They gave me a group of 15 Singaporean students this week that brought my total to around 30 or so, and I stuck them immediately on painting and ditch digging duty. Damn Singaporeans. That's payback for that crappy $17 Singapore Sling at Raffles. Speaking of digging, Lee and JC were digging holes for a cess pit on house 12 when they found one of the old septic rings from the previous house buried three feet deep. We tried to work out how to get around it but there was no way, so I told them we had to crack through half of it in order to get the new rings in. We got the big sledgehammer out and after the first whack realized that the old ring was black, which means filled with shit. The look on Lee's face was one of pure disgust, and I've never seen a 230 pound man leap out of a trench so fast. But, it had to be done so we equipped ourselves with surgical masks and I had the brilliant idea of smothering Tiger Balm under my nose to mitigate the smell of crap, which actually made me tear up because every time I breathed out the mask would blow eucalyptus into my eyes. Anyhow, I got down in there and finished sledging out the concrete ring, then began digging out poop. It was kind of weird, all packed in there like a can of cranberry sauce on Thanksgiving, except it was all black and green, and apparently the previous homeowners really enjoyed their chilies. Luckily, no one threw up, although Tom did roll some crap down his back from some overzealous shoveling.

We took a weekend road trip down to Krabi a couple of weeks ago and got 12 of us spread out between two of the Mercy station wagons. On the way down we had a boom box playing Swedish pop, courtesy of Joakim and Sanna, and Rich had his acoustic guitar on which he and Chris composed the song "Working on Koh Kho Khao" to the tune of "Knocking on Heaven's Door." Everyone was taking turns making up verses, and apparently the easiest thing to rhyme with Dave is "makes me work like a slave." We stayed on Ton Sai beach in Krabi, which is great if you're a rock climber or a pothead, but Ray Lei beach, which is just south of there, is a much nicer white sand beach. Ton Sai's beach was complete shit, all rocky and craggy and you couldn't walk into the water without some flip-flops or something else covering your feet. I have to admit, though, that the limestone cliffs that surround the beaches are quite striking. You could easily spend an afternoon with a couple of beers just watching the climbers going up and down the cliff faces. We spent the Sunday on the beach in Ray Lei and were blessed with the only sunny day I've seen in the last three or four weeks. It's been nothing but overcast and rainy since it officially turned into the "dry" season. Anyhow, the only reason we went to Ton Sai was because there was a caravan going over from the TVC, and I'd heard for a month how great Ton Sai was from all these guys, but I should've realized that it's because you can get weed and space cakes at just about every bar along the beach. So we ended up surrounded by hippy stoner volunteers with their shitty firedancing routines, which reminded me of living in the Haight for some reason.

I should've known better than to listen to those guys anyway, I never go into the TVC office unless I absolutely have to. One day I went in there during the afternoon and saw about 25-30 people working, or at least trying to look busy, and I just keep asking myself what the hell they need all these people in the office for. Luckily I'm not on the mailing list for staff but Jeremy keeps forwarding me these inane messages they send out about toner running low, or clothes being deposited by the front desk, or my favorite message... a support group is being formed for volunteers to help them deal with trauma and they wanted to know which name (out of a list of 5) was best suited for the program. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to be insensitive, but there are only 3 or 4 volunteers that were here during the actual tsunami and the vast proportion have only been here a few weeks. Maybe this was something that should've been established, I dunno, 9 months ago? I've observed the volunteer population, and I think the greatest trauma they encounter on a daily basis is where to eat or whether or not they're too hung over to go into work. It kind of reminds me of the crap people come up with in an office to justify their position when they don't have enough work to do. So anyhow, the only time I go into the office is on Monday nights when they have a general meeting, and that's only because I have to get up in front of everybody and give a status report. Most of the other project managers talk about how many boats they built or that they finally completed bathroom number 46 or some similar stuff that no one outside their group really cares about. I'm not crazy about public speaking, and most of it is a bullshit clapfest anyway, so I mostly end up making stuff up. I had a three-week streak where I mentioned something about Jeremy and his penchant for child pornography. I told the new volunteers that we had instituted Topless Tuesdays on the island. I came up with an open wound leaderboard and gave away a Stupid Injury of the Week award, although both of those have really tailed off since English Chris left town. I talked about how every member of my crew had been trained in the secretive art of monkey fighting, where the chief element is surprise. You never expect the tail. I said something about the average volunteer's worth being somewhere between a wheelbarrow and a roll of duct tape, because you get new volunteers every week but a wheelbarrow costs like 1000 baht. I said that Sanna was the strongest woman in the world in her weight class and that I saw her lift a cement mixer over her head. Anyhow, no one really laughs except my crew, and me of course, and that's all that matters.

As I mentioned before, I feel really lucky to have the crew I've been given, although I think that there's a checkbox on the volunteer signup sheet that says "Alcoholic" and if they mark it they send them over to the island. Last weekend a few of the team were drinking pretty much straight from Friday night until early Monday morning, with the highlight coming on Saturday night, probably in my top ten nights out ever. I won't get into too much detail since it would be boring in the retelling, but it included a spicy food eating contest, unsolicited karaoke, driving people out of three establishments, and breaking six glasses at the Marlin bar. Actually, one of the owners of Marlin bar told us the next day that it was one of the best nights he's had since he opened the bar. We've been good this week though and we still all have dinner together just about every night. I wouldn't mind having some more alone time, but it's one of those things where you figure you'll only have this one chance to capture this particular moment in time, so I might as well spend it with a great group of people. Supposedly we've gotten a rep among the other volunteers as the rowdy party group, which is not totally fair since I think it's only by comparison since all the rest of them are a bunch of stiffs. I'm friendly with just about everybody and some of the volunteers from the other groups tell me that we're cliquy (I dunno if that's the right spelling), which is probably true to some extent, but so are all the rest. People tend to hang out with who they know and who they work with, and not a lot of them make an effort to expand beyond their immediate circle. It seems like we're always the last to know when there's some large social event being planned and sometimes we don't even find out until after it's already happened. Maybe I should hang out more at the office. Nah. I try to make an effort though. Last night I sent a text message to all the other project managers inviting them and their crews to a pizza party/basketball/volleyball thing going on in Bang Sak put on by Mercy and only one of them even bothered to reply to me. So fuck them. I like my crew. Heh heh. I suppose I could look at it as justification for pulling off our pranks. We encased Nam Kem's truck in plastic wrap the other night, and we have a couple more planned for the upcoming week. Does anyone know if it's safe to give sleeping pills to a dog?

Anyhow, as one of the project managers I've been invited to the grand opening party for Le Meridien Khao Lak tonight, so I'll let you guys know how that works out. I'll probably have to cut out early since, well, I'm going to be surrounded by project managers and office staff. Who knows though, maybe I'll find some sugar mommy to put me up at the Meridien for a while. Heh heh. If I don't get a chance to talk to you, have a great holiday and happy new year!

As always, the Dude abides,
Dave

Stop, Listen... and Love

2005-11-20T20:33:00.000-08:00

Greetings everyone,

Pictures are here:

Stop, Listen... and Love

Last time I wrote I was still recovering from my brief dalliance with cross-dressing. Apparently, the hazards I'm facing in Thailand are not only due to conditions on the construction site. I now have to watch out for venom-spitting transvestites:
http://www.local6.com/news/5322040/detail.html
Thanks for the warning Gary.

There was a huge turnout for Jeremy's farewell bash. A bunch of us went out to dinner together and they let Jeremy and me cook our own dishes in the kitchen.
Jeremy made Massaman curry and I got to make some papaya salad. The best part was that the papaya came off a tree they had growing back behind the kitchen.
After the restaurant, we headed over to the Fisherman bar, which is usually crowded on a Friday night anyway, but there were probably about a hundred people there. Anyhow, as you can imagine there was a slight bit of alcohol involved with the leaving-do, and with Jeremy being the guest of honor, he was toasted approximately every 47 seconds. By about midnight he had partaken of just about 26 buckets, maybe 8 rounds of beer, and only he knows what else (or does he?). It's at this point that he decides he wants to make a speech to the entire gathering, so English Chris, Rich, and I tell everybody to shut up while Jeremy climbs on a chair and proceeds to spout five minutes of the most rambling, incoherent, and incomprehensible nonsense I've ever heard, and I've been to meetings with Eric Siegel (inside joke). Three of us are holding him up on the chair like a tripod because he keeps swaying from side to side. Just as the audience's interest is waning, Jeremy finds renewed vigor. "I have one more thing to say!" he shouts. He takes a long breath and stares over the bar. "Just remember this. I want you to Stop... I want you to Listen...." He takes a long pause and points his finger at the audience ".... and I want you to LOVE." At this point the entire bar erupts. It was as if some higher being had channeled the drunken body of Jeremy in order to deliver this profound message to the assembled masses. This point was further illustrated by the fact that as soon as he said the word "love" he fell off the chair and into a group of about 5 people. It was madness, people were cheering for about a minute, everybody was talking about it the next day, and the thing is Jeremy didn't remember any of it, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

About an hour later, after we were all thoroughly inebriated, Jeremy decides he wants to give another speech. Well, there's no way he's going to top the one he's already given, but since it's his last night we're going to give him some leeway. As he climbs up on a chair and begins to talk, this jackass climbs on the bar starts shouting him down saying "nobody wants to fucking hear it" and other comments to that effect. So Richard decides that he's not going to have any of it and decides to take matters into his own hands, grabbing the guy around the waist and yanking him down off the bar. So now the guy's buddies get into it and English Chris starts squaring up with one of those guys. They're yelling at each other, tensions are flaring, and, as we learned the next day, turns out Rich was grazed by a punch from the first guy. So I go in there to try and break up Chris and the other guy, I manage to get Chris away from him and the guy starts to square up on me and get in my face. Now normally I consider myself a lover and not a fighter, but I suppose a few Changs and an insult to your friend can change that pretty quickly, so I find myself right up in this guy's face just talking all sorts of shit. I know, fighting is stupid and all that, but I'll tell you that I've never been that ready to throw down in my life. This idiot was continuing to talk shit about Jeremy so I could feel the hairs on the back of my neck rising up, my heart rate climbing, and my hands forming into fists as I'm yelling at this dude about an inch away from his face. It was kind of nuts, I just wanted to destroy the guy, and all it would've taken was a move from one of us and it was on. Luckily, four or five people jumped in and separated us, most of them being women, who are uncannily gifted at making guys feel stupid for wanting to fight, so I managed to calm myself down pretty quickly. English Chris and Rich were another story however, and I spent most of the rest of the night keeping them in one corner of the bar so that nothing would flare up again. In retrospect, it probably wouldn't have been the best idea to open up my tenure as project manager on the island with a massive brawl among the volunteers, but I have to admit it was kind of cool to see the crew rally together in that situation. Plus, those guys had it coming, I think we showed remarkable self-discipline. Well, except for the drinking until 6 am part.

That was probably the most exciting thing that's happened the last few weeks. On the island I'm getting used to my new responsibilities, I've already managed to oversee a screwed-up floor and a crooked support column, so just be thankful that you're not getting a Thai house constructed under my expert supervision. I did learn how to mix concrete this week, which is a lot of fun but physically exhausting since each of those cement bags weighs probably 80 pounds or so. One of them opened up on me as I was lifting it and spilled its contents all across my shirtless body. I don't know if you know how well cement sticks to sweat and particularly body hair, but I looked like Santa Claus' hairy Italian cousin. I'm still getting the hang of this construction gig, what can I say? What I *am* good at is screwing around, so I organized a 3 am pirate raid last week on one of the other groups. We filled the back of their truck with sand and left a coconut with a skull and crossbones drawn on it, seeing as how we're the construction pirates and whatnot. Nobody knows it's us yet and we're planning some other raids, so don't say anything.

I also managed to weasel my way into a room at Le Meridien Khao Lak on Friday through the Mercy Foundation, which was way, way sweet. Some of the Mercy folks had been building a playground with this group called Kids Around the World who were staying at Le Meridien Khao Lak and crazy Dean offered me an extra room they had for Friday night with the stipulation that I have no "female roommates." I don't know what kind of reputation I have with the Mercy folks that they feel that they would need to make that expressly clear, and it sucks because the best part of having that kind of rep is earning it so it's definitely undeserved. Also, what's the point of staying at Le Meridien Khao Lak if you can't flash around your room key and use it to pull, but that's a minor point I suppose, and just having written that last sentence completely contradicts the previous one. Let's move on.

So we get the day off on Friday because of the dedication for the playground, which was great because there were 50 or so kids there from the local school in Bang Sak. They built slides, monkey bars, and a row of about 12 swings. They also put in a basketball court, which is great because we all know how much basketball is beloved by Thais. After the ceremony I went to check into the room at Le Meridien Khao Lak, which, if you didn't know this already, is an experience unto itself. They bring you cool lemon juice and a cold towel as you're sitting on a couch waiting to check in. Then they personally escort you to your room to show you the various amenities, features, and general whatnot in your luxury pad. The bathroom is encased in glass so, if you wish, you can raise the curtains and look out across your room out to the balcony and accompanying view as you're taking a shower, or a bath, or a dump. The balcony looked out onto the enormous pool complete with waterslide, and as I was remarking on this, the woman laughed and said "That's the kids' pool. We have three of them, the large one is behind the lobby." Of course, the kids' pool! How foolish of me.

So what did I do after check-in? I went to collect the rest of my team, of course. We fit 12 people into The Shark (my car), pulled into the parking lot, and walked through the service entrance toward our block of rooms where everyone got changed. We spent the rest of the afternoon crashing the various amenities offered at Le Meridien Khao Lak in a scene reminiscent of Caddy Day at the Bushwood Country Club pool from the movie "Caddyshack." I spent the night on a plush king-size bed and woke up the next morning in time for the 600 baht breakfast which is free for hotel guests, complete with fruit station, cereal station, pastry station, Thai food station, western food station, omelet station, waffle station, and real coffee. And, to cap it all off, I have to say that few things are more gratifying than taking a dump in a luxury bathroom. So I took two. Then I spent up until one minute before checkout watching HBO.

That's about it for now, I'm sure I forgot something but this message is already long enough as it is. As always, the Dude abides, Dave

P.S. Don't forget to Stop, Listen, and LOVE!

From Dean to Queen

2005-11-01T20:01:00.000-08:00

Pictures are here:

From Dean to Queen

First, a clarification from my last message. I didn't mean to imply that Chan is an evil person, merely that evil things seem to happen to me when he's around or directing me to do anything. But he's a volunteer as well, he likes to giggle, and he has a cute kid so I just want to make sure that you know he's not actually evil. Of course, I've never been to his house, so he could have a pentagram and a sacrificial chamber in his basement for all I know, but he doesn't seem evil.

The same can't really be said for Dean, though. He might actually be evil. He's the head of the Mercy Foundation group that's doing all the construction here in Khao Lak and he has ADD. Seriously, he has some kind of diagnosed hyper ADD... and he likes to drive the Bobcat. Suffice it to say, Dean has acquired a reputation with all the folks working on the project as a kind of dangerous but well-meaning psycho. The first time I witnessed this in person was when a small group of us was cleaning up debris from one of the houses and putting it in piles. They burn pretty much everything here in Thailand so Dean was trying to figure out how to set fire to one of the debris piles. He decided to get a bucketful of gasoline and douse the pile in order to make sure it caught fire. I was about a hundred feet away still clearing debris when all of a sudden I hear this whoosh sound and turn just in time to see this fireball rising into the air. That was the first and only time I've seen Mica sprinting, which looked somewhat like when Scooby Doo and Shaggy were running from a ghost with a lot of shuffling but not much progress, and she was at least five steps in front of Dean. Seems as though he thought it was a good idea to light the pile from a couple of feet away. Next image I have is of him on a table with morning glory being applied to his burns by some of the Thai volunteers. As far as my personal safety goes, the worst he's done is almost sever my achilles tendon by chucking three or four shovels toward me, but I seem to have some sort of Dean shield which helps prevent injury. Of course, if both Dean and Chan are in the same area, I'm not sure which would be the stronger force. Let's hope we never find out. Anyway, last week he almost ran over four volunteers with the Bobcat. Then later in the week he took a group of us to one of the waterfalls after work, and on the way we almost got in a head-on collision with a large truck while he was trying to pass another car. Going uphill. Into a curve. This is only the stuff that I've witnessed myself. One of the other volunteers named Seth told me that he was riding back from Krabi with Dean when he suddenly stopped, pulled the car over, jumped out, ran after a mangrove viper that was hanging out by the side of the road and started poking it with a stick.

Anyway, the reason I'm mentioning this is because I'll be working a lot more closely with Dean since I've been asked to take over as project manager for the island construction project after Jeremy leaves next week. Yes, times are desperate on Koh Kho Kao, they'll take pretty much anybody. So if any of you want to come out and dig, even for a couple of days, just show up at Khao Lak Seafood at 8:30 any weekday morning and I'll put you to work. I can guarantee you one thing... you will stink. How much more tempting can I make this offer? Just think about it... most people pay hundreds of dollars for spa treatments. You get, for free, a mineral mud bath while digging out a cesspool. Not tempting enough for you? Well, have you tried our concrete facial? Come to Koh Kho Kao spa! Of course, the unfortunate corollary of this "promotion" seems to be that I'm going to have to get a cell phone. But I did find out that you can get the entire text of the bible sent to you via SMS, so you know what I'll be wanting for Christmas.

On the work front, the house construction is going very well. Last week we had a contest to see who had the most open wounds, but they only counted if they were currently hurting. I was leading the pack with 11, but Jeremy got a couple that day so I think he passed me. I'm usually very absorbed in the task at hand so I seldom stop to think about why I'm here or the people I'm working for while I'm actually working. It's nice when one of the people whose home you're building stops by and thanks you, asks you where you're from, wants to know more about you, etc. When we were digging septics one afternoon we took a break and found that our cooler had been stocked with snacks and beer by the villagers. You'll get a story here or there about what happened during the tsunami, not usually from the people themselves but secondhand. Kung, who ferries us back and forth to the island every day and for whom we're building house 13, actually found his brother's corpse the day after the wave hit. One of the Thai workers, an older woman, stopped one evening and chatted with a group of us for about fifteen minutes through one of the volunteers that speaks some Thai and thanked us for coming all this way to work for Thailand. Almost everybody asks you why you're doing it, so I tell them that I like to dig. Then every once in a while something will hit you that you can't escape from. I was digging this hole last week for a foundation, and let me tell you something that fucker was really, really pissing me off. There was all sorts of debris where I was digging so I was pulling out bits of floor and concrete. We're building over the lots where houses used to be so it's normal to be finding these types of things, but in this one I actually found a column that ended in a concrete footer. So there are two or three of us working this footer with a pickaxe and a chisel, then I get in there bashing the column with a sledgehammer, which is really fun by the way but very tiring. Anyhow, we get this footer out of there and I'm clearing the debris with a shovel while everyone else goes about their business when I step on something that doesn't feel exactly like debris. So I reach down to pick it up and I come up with this little plastic toy. No big deal, just some figurine, but clearly a kid's toy, and at that point I came really close to losing it. I mean, you guys know me, I'm usually about as emotional as a lawn chair, but I was standing there, covered in sweat, mud and bits of cement dust, standing barefoot in a four-foot pit, physically exhausted, and I was really not expecting to come up with a kid's toy. That was a rough one for the old Bresh-man. I had to just get rid of it and keep on digging to try and put it out of my mind. Those moments are kind of tough, but they're few and far between and the rewarding times outweigh them by far.

For the past week or so I've been following Jeremy around and trying to figure out what the hell it is that I'm going to do when he leaves. I figure the best thing to do would be to imitate him, so whenever someone comes up and asks me a question I'll say "It's up to you." See, it's a win-win situation because they feel like you're delegating authority and you don't have to actually come up with any ideas or answers. He's a genius! But basically I've been running around taking notes and figuring out how to do 2nd story floors. So last night for Halloween there was a big to-do since people around here will use any excuse to get together and pound beers. Of course, we had not thought of any costume ideas so it was left up to my last-minute stroke of genius to come up with something. Let me preface this by saying I'd had a couple of beers with dinner. So I said Jeremy and I should go as two ladyboys, but he said that there would already be too many guys in drag and it would be lame. So my next genius idea was for us to go as The Abusive Husband and The Wife Who Doesn't Listen, which would've worked except we didn't have the right makeup to give me a black eye. So we used the same concept and got Jeremy to dress up in boxers and a wifebeater and I went as Jeremy's Bitch, which is pretty much what I've been the last two weeks anyway. So Mica had a great time applying eyeliner (which is really, really freaky by the way), lipstick, and nail polish, and I used the curtain from my room as a dress, and I am never ever ever going to do that again. Never mind the fact that I was the ONLY guy in drag at the party. My dress kept falling down and I got felt up once. Then the dress was making my ass look big. Then everything tasted like lipstick, and no one appreciated the nail polish since it was so dark. Helloooo! I'm making an effort here! Wait... I lost myself for a minute. Okay then. Many beers later, I woke up this morning (late) realizing what I'd done and I was like Lady Macbeth trying to get that freaking nail polish off. Ugh... I'm going to see those pictures on the internet, I just know it.

Anyway, that's what's new with me. As always, the dude abides, Dave

Evil Chan

2005-10-17T19:40:00.000-07:00

Pictures are here:

Evil Chan

Greetings from Thailand, where men are men and women are also men. My name is Dave, and it's been four weeks since my last ping pong show.

A couple of weeks ago as part of our volunteer group project I was able to go to a local elementary school to donate some art supplies and spend some time drawing with some of the kids. The school was constructed out of what look like temporary barracks by the Thai army. At first, the kids were a bit apprehensive about having some large foreigners waving pencils and crayons at them, but after a while they began to warm up to us. I'm not sure of the quality of psychiatric care in Thailand so I didn't want any of the kids to grow up with self-esteem issues stemming from my visit, therefore I made sure that I let every kid know in my broken Thai that their drawing was very good, even though some of them really, really sucked. Hey, not everyone can be Picasso. The kids were free to draw whatever they wanted and there were many pictures of landscapes, sunsets, Pokemon, and various Japanese anime. The kids seemed to really like it when I drew them a couple of Spider Man pictures, which on the now puts "Drawing in the margins of my notebook" a few notches higher than "Calculus" as far as high school activities that have been useful to me. Lots of the kids were very eager to draw tsunami pictures, which I found kind of odd. I think it's great if they find it cathartic, but I hope they weren't doing it because they thought that's what we wanted to see.

On the work front, it's been a frustrating couple of weeks because of the rain. We're at the tail end of the rainy season and storms will rise up out of nowhere, soak the town for half a day, then leave. This can be especially annoying when you've spent an entire day digging 3x3x4 ditches for foundations and find that they are completely filled in with water and dirt the next day. I had the idea that we should dedicate a group to finishing cesspool work before the end of the month, which of course now means that I'm in charge of finishing cesspool work by the end of the month. So there's a lesson I should've learned from corporate America... keep your ideas to yourself.

Some airline group showed up with 18 volunteers for a couple of days to help with some of the work on the island as well. When I heard that 18 flight attendants were going to be precipitating on my location, naturally hopes were high. I was having visions about some "Women of the sky" issue of Playboy that I've... heard about. Well, it's possible that these ladies could've been in Playboy, maybe in the June 1952 issue. They were really loud and very American, and after two days at the worksite thought they had figured everything out. Well, this crew of cacophonic harpies soon found out what they were in for when we went to dig holes at the island! Still, they showed up for a few days and put in some work on the housebuilding, and their organization donated a hundred grand toward the building of a playground, so my hat's off to them.

Work-wise, we're making a big run to try to get a lot of the houses on the mainland done before the inauguration ceremony at the end of the month. I've spent a lot of quality time dropping off cesspool (they're not really septic tanks I've been told) lids with the local construction supervisor, a guy named Chan. He doesn't speak any English but when he needs you to do something he'll unleash a flurry of gestures and then look at you and giggle. Hee hee hee... how about moving a 150 lb concrete ring? Hee hee hee...I need you to repaint the side of that house. Hee hee hee... dig, bitch! Now, I don't know if he's actually said that, but I'm watching him. Anyway, one day last week this giggling harbinger of doom asked me and another volunteer named Mark to help him move a cement mixer. Mark is a very cool guy who's a cross between Dr. Evil, a vampire, and a hyperactive monkey. So we get to the place where the mixer is located and help him raise up a hoist and attach a winch. Through a series of gestures he explains that we want to lift up the mixer and lower it into his pickup truck. Since the mixer is on a slight incline we're going to need to raise and lower it a couple of times before we get into position. Well, during one of the raisings while I'm adjusting the position of the mixer so we can lower it, one of the feet on the hoist tips over the cement mixer and hoist tilt over and fall on top of me. Now, I'm not good with numbers, but I'd guess the mixer weighs about 500 pounds and the hoist maybe a couple hundred. Everything occurs in slow motion, or maybe due to my finely-honed catlike reflexes it just seems that way. Maybe I've got some kind of spider-sense. Bresci-sense. Anyway, I duck around the falling hoist and the mixer falls just in front and to the right of me, but being on an incline, proceeds to roll over on top of my leg. Well, ever since those Samoans did a number on me that Thanksgiving day playing football, my leg has been more flexible and I'm able to worm my way out from under the mixer. Chan and Mark are a little bit freaked out, but hey, no harm done. We finally get the mixer on the truck at which point Chan looks at us and indicates that he'd like us to climb into the cab and hold on to the mixer to make sure it doesn't fall over on the ride to the new location. Since I am an idiot, I don't really see the downside of this plan, but Mark seems to have the instinct of self-preservation and says "No way!" So Chan takes a breath, looks at both of us, then starts giggling. He goes into the cab of his truck and pulls out 30 feet of rope which he uses to fasten the mixer to the truck, then he giggles again, climbs in the truck, and drives off.

This week there was some kind of bug going around the group so a few of us had to take a day off or so to battle the flu. There was a party Wednesday night because one of the volunteers who's been working here for the last 10 weeks was leaving, a guy named Steve who ends each sentence like he's asking a question. I was very proud that as a group we were sharing some American cultural traditions with the local Thais by introducing them to a beer bong. I don't know what it says about me that I have more pictures of people drinking beer bongs than I do of my day in Firenze.
Other than that, probably the most exciting thing that happened recently was some guy asking me if I wanted to buy viagra on my trip to Ranong to cross the river into Myanmar and renew my 30-day visa. Maybe I could've used it when I was propositioned by a Russian bisexual. Good times!

As you can probably guess, I'm planning on staying in Khao Lak another thirty days. There's a lot of work left to be done in order to get people into their houses and I think most of it is going to have to get done in the next month. There are a few of us staying longer, the hardcore four-week group being me, our Thai liaison Mui, and Mica, a wee Scottish lass who likes gnocchi and cradle-robbing. Ha ha ha! I'm going to pay for that but it was worth it. In the four weeks I've been here, I've already seen a lot of changes in the area. Where there used to be just soft dirt and earth in front of the stores has now been freshly paved over with asphalt. There are probably a third more stores open now than there were a few weeks ago in anticipation of "high season" which begins in November. I really hope for the locals that there is a high season, but to me it doesn't look like this place is ready to handle a significant influx of tourists. Things are moving quickly though so we'll see how it looks in a month. I figure we'll have done our job if this eventually turns into a place that I won't want to visit.

As always, the Dude abides,
Dave

From Thailand with Love

2005-10-02T19:25:00.000-07:00

Pictures are here:

From Thailand With Love

Greetings from the only man who could go to Thailand and get constipated,

The last time you probably heard from me I was either in Italy or on my way there. For brevity's sake, I'll relate to you that the most interesting/exciting thing that happened to me during my month in Italy is that I ripped a mole off my abdomen while surfing and I had to spend a couple of days getting surf wax out of my chest hair. So I'm not doing that again without a rash guard. I also flipped a kayak about 300 yards from shore and had to drag it back in behind me while I was swimming. That was a lot of fun.

After a couple of days in London visiting my brother, I landed in Bangkok where I was picked up by Pop, my buddy from Keynote. He's a Bangkok native and offered to me a place to stay at his parents' place above their hardware store in Chinatown. Pop was great... he drove me all around Bangkok to show me some of the sites. We went to see some muay thai fights at Lumphini stadium and we tried to get me in for the Thai price by having Pop buy the tickets but they stopped us at the door and we had to pay an extra $30 because I'm a foreigner. The next day we went to a floating market where we rented a longboat and a guide took us up and down this warren of canals browsing through floating food stands and shops. We visited a couple of large temples including the one with the 200-foot-long reclining Buddha. Pop insisted that I burn some incense and pray with him, although I explained that I'm pretty sure I'm already going to hell. Pop's family then treated me to dinner on a river barge that floats up and down the Chao Praya giving brief tours of Bangkok. I ate some fish stomach soup, which tastes a lot like a cross between tripe and shark's fin soup.
The highlight of my Bangkok sojourn, though, was my excursion to Patpong to witness the ping-pong show. How could I leave this city without seeing perhaps its most renowned tourist attraction? Without going into too much detail, the next time a woman tells me she has a headache I'm going to put things in perspective by reminding her that I'm not asking her to put anything sharp and/or flammable in there.

The last couple of weeks I've been here in Khao Lak which was the area of Thailand that was hit hardest by the tsunami. The coastline here curves outward and forms a mini-peninsula, and the wave hit that area at about a 45 degree angle. If you want an idea of what happens, take a bucket of water and chuck it against a corner of your bathtub. You'll see that the water swirls around and forms a sort of whirlpool before heading toward the drain. Well, imagine that on a massive scale. There are a few fishing boats and a police boat that made it 3 kilometers inland and have been left there as a sort of monument to the disaster. The area is clearly not as bad as it was 8 months ago, but there's a lot of work left to be done. There are a lot of families that are still living in makeshift camps so we've been working our asses off to build them some housing. We're working with this group called the Mercy Foundation that's responsible for building 52 houses in the area. Most of the work that we've been doing has involved cutting down and tying rebar to make the steel supports that will frame the houses before pouring the concrete. We've also spent a couple of days working on a nearby island mixing and pouring concrete into the molds. My specialty so far has been digging holes behind some of the constructed houses and dropping in septic tanks.
There's been a lot of rain so in some areas I've had to drop into an existing tank just to clear it of dirt and water. Let me tell you, it was a long van ride home for the other passengers that day, which also earned me the nickname of Septic Boy. Probably the coolest thing I've done is learned how to drive a Bobcat, one of only ten in all of Thailand. I'm not sure how I lucked into that one, but heavy machinery is now one of the skills I can put on my resume. It's very hot and humid and I usually end up drinking about 5 liters of water a day. I should probably take more breaks than I do but I don't like it when other people are working and I'm not. This is probably the hardest I've ever worked in my life, but I'm loving it. Khao Lak is really laid back. I've met some extremely cool people not only in our group, among other volunteer groups, and among the Thai locals as well. There's this one Thai guy named Ken who's a digging machine. He's like half-man half-hoe. I've picked up some words here and there and now I think I can offend people in five different languages.

On the leisure side of things, we're staying at the Khao Lak Palm Beach resort, which looks like a 5-star kind of place until you walk about a hundred yards down toward the beach and realize that half the bungalows were completely destroyed and are just now being rebuilt. The place won't be officially open for business until the beginning of November, but they have an arrangement to let certain volunteer groups stay at reduced rates. They have a pool, which is nice. I'm loving the Thai food and trying to stay away from the Chang beer, but it's like an abusive relationship... I just keep coming back for more. Damn you Beer Chang!
Last weekend a bunch of us went and stayed a couple of days on Koh Phi Phi, which is a butterfly-shaped island 30 miles away from Phuket. The tsunami hit the island from both sides and almost completely wiped it clean. It looks like a lot of development has been done the last few months, though, and I think it'll be back to the way it was before in a few months. We rented a longtail boat and went over to Phi Phi Lei for some snorkeling and to check out where they filmed the movie "The Beach." We had to snorkel up to a cave and then walk through the center of the island to reach Maya Beach, which is THE beach. The sea was very angry that day my friends, like an old man trying to send back soup at a deli, so there were no boats that could approach the beach from the water and four of us were there all alone. It was gorgeous. There are cliffs rising up a couple hundred yards on both sides which look like outstretched arms encircling the beach out to the sea, and the inlet between the arms is shallow and mostly protected from the weather. It reminded me of a fjord the way the rocks projected straight up into the air. The sand is white and fine and the water is probably about 80 degrees. On the way back a storm came up out of nowhere and the longtail boat navigator (his name was Sulu, I'm not kidding) had to steer us through 2-3 meter waves. If you've ever been on a longtail boat then you know they're not exactly designed to take on that kind of sea, so there was a period of about 15 minutes where I was pretty sure we were going to capsize. It was like a rollercoaster ride as we would peak up on top of one wave, slide down its back and be immediately on top of another. I wasn't shitting bricks or anything because we all had lifejackets and I'm confident in the water, but you never know when someone could hit their head or something. Plus, there were a few in our group that aren't exactly comfortable in the water, so it wouldn't have been fun to deal with three or four panicky people. But, yadda yadda yadda, we survived, the boat didn't flip, and I'm sure the story will be embellished to include sharks and giant octopi as it gets retold. Other miscellaneous fun stuff: I got into a chili-eating contest with our Thai group leader, which we ended up tying. We didn't eat the chilies straight-up, we ate them as part of a papaya salad, and we both went through two of them. He told me that the second salad had thirty-plus small chilies in it. You guys know how I get when it comes to these kinds of competitions, so I wasn't going to let him beat me, but the rest of the group pretty much ordered us to stop, which I was thankful for the next morning. Believe me, it was much worse coming out than going in. Well, you haven't really been to Thailand unless you've had diarrhea and a venereal disease, so I'm 1 for 2. I ate some frog for lunch yesterday, which was pretty tasty but had too many bones.

Anyway, I'm sorry for rambling like this but I had a lot to say. I'm really looking forward to another couple of weeks of digging septic tanks and bending steel. I like bending the steel, it feels elemental. We're already senior staff here after only a couple of weeks so who knows, I might stay longer and take over the entire operation. Heh heh.

As always, The Dude abides,
Dave a.k.a. Septic Boy

Carnevale di Viareggio

2005-02-15T19:10:00.000-08:00

When people think of Carnival, they typically think of the one in Rio. There's a less well-known one that's been happening for a hundred years in my home town of Viareggio. It's just like the one in Rio, except with less T&A and a reduced chance of acquiring a venereal disease. Hey, it's February, it's cold in the northern hemisphere. Don't worry, if you want VD there are plenty of Ukranian strippers around.

Anyhow, the city pretty much shuts down to party for an entire month. On four consecutive Sundays they have a parade of giant papier-mache floats along the beachfront in order to judge which is best. The winner gets something like 100K euros. Everyone dresses up in costumes, and other days of the week a different part of the city shuts down to have a big outdoor party. Between Carnevale and the beach in the summer, it's no wonder about half of the kids who live in Viareggio flunk out of school.

Other minor highlights include learning the subtleties of squatter's rights in London at Stefano's place, and enjoying a meal in Rome cooked by a top chef on the Italian version of the Food network.

Enjoy the pics...

Carnevale

Santa's Boy Toy: A Christmas Story

2004-12-27T17:48:00.000-08:00

I'm looking for something to do the week before Christmas when, in an uncharacteristic fit of altruism, I decide to volunteer for the holidays. I haven't done much volunteering, actually zero, but I figure what the hell, it's not like I have anything pressing on my schedule. Come to think of it, I don't even have a schedule.
I'm browsing through some of the online ads and find out that the AIDS Emergency Fund needs help with their annual Christmas eve dinner for AIDS victims and their families. It sounds like a rewarding experience, or at least sounds like it doesn't suck too badly. Besides, it gives me an excuse to wear my Santa hat.
On Christmas eve morning, I arrive at the War Memorial building across the street from city hall on about an hour before they're scheduled to start serving food. All the volunteers are corralled into one room, awaiting instructions from the event organizers. I'm a bit early, so I manage to avoid the free-for-all at the bagel and coffee table. Even at a charity event, the melee that ensues at the free snack table when most of the volunteers arrive is shameful.
A couple of the coordinators walk in and give us a briefing on what's going to happen, how many people are expected to show, and what kind of duties are available for us volunteers. The dinner is in its 17th year, and they are expecting between 1000-1200 people for this year's event. Most of the duties involve food and drink serving, coat check, and cleanup. The coordinators then proceed to pick people at random and lead them out of the room to their stations.
A handful of us are left, waiting for our assignments. One of the coordinators comes back into the room, glances around, walks up to me and asks, "Do you want to work at the North Pole?"
"Sure."
I follow him out of the room, around a couple of corners and over to a display with a large Christmas tree, some stuffed animals, and a cloth-covered chair.
"This is the North Pole. People are going to be coming here to get their pictures taken with Santa. Tony will tell you what to do. "
Tony, a short Asian guy who's in his seventh year volunteering for the event, is in charge of the Santa operation. My job is to keep people in line, ask the kids their ages so we can get them an appropriate gift, and take pictures if the photographer goes on break. I'm the line elf.
This is way better than shoveling mashed potatoes onto people's plates. I get to interact with people, give gifts to little kids, spread holiday cheer and whatever the hell else does not involve getting gravy stains on my shirt. I take off my sweater and don my Santa hat, ready for action.
As the first few people trickle into the North Pole, I start to get the hang of things. I keep an eye out for kids, and when I see one I say hello and ask them their age. I keep the line moving. I hold bags and purses while people sit on Santa's lap. I chat with the folks in line, trying to keep things light. It's turning out to be a lot of fun, and the kids seem to be really appreciative of the gifts.
I'm watching a couple of middle-aged guys getting their picture taken with Santa when one of them waves over to me and asks, "Can we take a picture with you?"
"Me? Sure, I guess." Why would anyone want me in their picture? I walk over and stand between them, and they huddle in toward me for the shot.
"Smile!"
They thank me, and I wish them a Merry Christmas as they walk away.
I continue doing my elf thing, greeting people, making small talk, things like that. There are two Santas, one an older man, and one a thin younger woman. They switch off every half hour or so, since it gets pretty hot in that Santa suit.
I'm absent-mindedly watching a couple of kids have their picture taken with the older Santa, when I hear a voice behind me say, "I want a picture with Santa's helper!"
Before I have a chance to register exactly what that means, there's an arm around my waist and another one around my chest. I'm being grappled from behind by an unknown assailant! Wait a minute. I think I'm being spooned! I look to my left just in time to be blinded by two camera
flashes.
Though a bit disoriented, I turn around in time to see a chubby, disheveled man in shorts and a short-sleeved shirt laughing and walking away. "Merry Christmas Santa's helper!"
Huh. That was weird. I look over at Tony and the photographer and they just smile. I get a few more picture requests here and there, some with families and some with just random people. I figure I must be doing a good job of entertaining the crowd if people want to remember me in their photographs.
I continue busily distributing gifts and managing the growing crowd.
The dinners are served by invitation every hour, so folks seem to be coming in waves. The routine seems to be that after they've eaten, they head straight for a picture with Santa. I've become the MC of the North Pole, chatting with people, cracking jokes, and trying to make sure that everyone's having a good time. I'm in some kind of elf groove.
After handing a couple of gifts to some kids who have just had their picture taken, I turn around and find myself confronted by a very tall, bald African-American fellow at the front of the line. He looks me up and down inquisitively.
"So. you're the sexy Santa's helper that everyone's been talking about?"
I look around to see if he's talking to somebody else. "Who? Me?"
"Yeah you. The security guys are all talking about you. Haven't you noticed how they keep coming by?"
"Uh. not really. I mean, they're security guys. I figured they were just, you know, securing things."
"Uh-huh."
Oh boy. Things are starting to make a little more sense. The pictures. The spooning. The security guys. The popularity. All of which would be great. if I was gay.
Now I'm not sure what to do. I'm wearing kind of a tight black t-shirt. Maybe I should put my sweater back on. Wait a second. be cool.
After all, it's no big deal, just a few pictures here and there. Still, I don't want to give the wrong impression. I mean, with women, even if they're ugly, you flirt with them when they're flirting with you. What do you do when guys are flirting with you? What exactly is the protocol? I don't want to be rude. Even worse, I don't want to be a cocktease. I can't believe I just thought that.
I'm working on my strategy when I see a familiar face walking toward me from the back of the line. This guy has taken his picture with Santa more than once, so I've had a couple of conversations with him as he's made his way up the line. He's heading straight toward me. He has two cards and a pen in his hand. Oh no.
"Hey, I thought we could exchange numbers."
I say the first thing that comes to mind. "What for?"
"So we can get together." He hands me one of the cards. It has his e-mail, his cell phone, and his home phone. I guess he's worried that I won't be able to get a hold of him in an emergency.
Oh shit. What do I do now? "Listen man. uh. I. uh. you know. I uh.
I like ladies."
His expression is unchanging. "Okay."
Okay? What does that mean? "Uh. I just wanted to make sure. uh. so you mean like get together for a beer or something?"
"Yeah!"
"Well, sure I guess." I take the other card and start writing my e-mail address. Wait a minute. do I want this guy having my e-mail? Shit, too late! I already started writing it. Okay, I'll change one letter, that way later I can always say that I made a mistake. Clever.
"Just your e-mail, no phone number?"
"Uh, I don't have a phone. I mean, I don't have a cell phone and I never pick up the house phone. E-mail is best. But not for another couple of weeks. I'm going to visit my family. They're down south." I gesture in a random direction which may or may not be south.
"Okay, well maybe I'll talk to you later."
"Yeah. See ya." Oh man. I just used the e-mail equivalent of the phony number routine on a dude. It's like I violated some guy code. I am a tease. I feel kind of dirty.
As the afternoon progresses, the Santa's helper picture requests become even more popular. I've never had so many guys wanting to sit on my lap. One time, during a group shot, the guy standing next to me has to lean in toward Santa to get into the picture, so he reaches back and grabs my ass "for stability." Another time, I'm kneeling next to Santa for a group picture when I hear someone standing in line shout, "I think Santa's helper should take his shirt off!"
Now I know what it's like to be a chick walking by a construction site. Granted, it's flattering. A bit awkward, but flattering.
I continue handing out gifts as people get their pictures taken with Santa.
I'm only supposed to give the gifts to kids, but we have a lot of them. I manage to sneak a little something to the ladies I've befriended that tell me they want something for their kids or grandkids. Yeah, maybe they're
making it up, but so what? It's the holidays. A few of the families come
through more than once to get their picture, and we let them have as many as they'd like.
After a while, one of the security guys comes up to me and says, "Dorothy wants to get her picture taken with the sexy elf. Is that okay?"
"Of course!" Dorothy? That sounds promising. At least it's a woman.
I sit down in Santa's chair, and as I look up I see the security guy coming toward me leading the way for the aforementioned Dorothy. She's been working in the kitchen, so she's wearing an apron to go with her decorative sweater and glasses. Dorothy is 82 years old.
"I get my picture taken at the North Pole every year, and this year I wanted it with the sexy elf!" I've become the Christmas poster boy for gay men and octogenarian women. I wonder if I could somehow work that into my resume.
As the dinner crowd starts to thin out, so does the activity at the North Pole. for everyone except Santa's helper. Toward the end of the day, one of the security guys comes up to me and tells me that I'm his Christmas present and he wants to take me home. Later, an African American guy wants to get a picture with me but says the lighting by the tree makes his skin look too dark. We end up going out in the hallway to take a picture, after which he gives me a hug and a kiss on the cheek. Eh, what the hell. Merry Christmas.
You know what, though? I'm glad I did it. Everyone that came through the North Pole, for whatever reason, whether it was to get a picture with Santa, or for a gift, or even to get a picture with the elf, left with a smile on their face. There were families and individuals, young and old, people of all shapes, sizes and colors. I cracked a lot of jokes, took a lot of pictures, had a few laughs, and tried to make some sick people happy on Christmas eve. In the end, it wasn't altruism at all. I was completely self-centered. I did it because it felt good for me to do it. I'd gladly do it again. Next time, though, I'm going to grow a scruffy beard and wear an overcoat.

Stefano's Wedding and El Masturbador

2004-09-09T17:34:00.000-07:00

Pictures here though there aren't many....

Stefano's Wedding etc...

I think my first mistake was that I forgot both my Giants hat and my Raiders jersey when I was packing my stuff. I never travel anywhere without at least one of them.

So I get to London and manage to ascertain exactly how the preparations are going. No reception booked. No tux. No wedding rings. This is 5 days before the wedding. Ah... of course. At least Stefano's predictable. Anyway, after dinner we went to this bar called Corum to arrange for the reception, which was negotiated by yours truly. The night ended back home with Stefano, taking advantage of my weakened state, beating me with my laptop while I was trying to pass out. Typical first day.

At this point, I'd like to take some time to explain the shower facilities in Stefano's house. Actually, it's not even a shower. It's a garden hose attached to the hot and cold water faucets. I'm attaching a picture so you can get an idea of what I'm talking about. I had better facilities in Thailand. "The Tube" quickly achieved legendary status among the houseguests. So that afternoon I went out with Stefano and Caterina to pick out their wedding rings. Did you know that the best man is supposed to pay for the rings? I wasn't aware of this but apparently it's an Italian tradition. Luckily, Stefano and Caterina decided to take it easy on me and we went around the Lewisham area looking for wedding rings at pawn shops.
They were really specific about wanting a matched set of three interlocking rings. I'm thinking that there's no way in hell we're going to find something that esoteric wandering through pawn shops in the London version of the Tenderloin. Well, lo and behold, at the 4th place we entered we found a matching wedding set that actually fit both of them. Weird.

So the next day Stefano, his buddy Michele and I go to pick out a tux on Oxford street. Stefano tried on this gray three-piece that with his crazed haircut made him look like a mutated hobbit during Bilbo's party scene in the first Lord of the Rings. So the guy asks him when he needs it and Stefano says in three days. The guy basically laughed at us and said the only thing he could give us by that time was a charcoal gray suit, which is what we ended up getting. At this point, Ste turns to me and says "Could you spot me for the tux? I'll pay you back after the wedding." Okay, there's no way in hell that I'm going to take his wedding money, so let's chalk another one up to travel expenses. Too bad I couldn't expense it to Keynote, like that time George and I took Stefano out to a 200-quid sushi dinner. Heh heh.

So on sunday after dinner we all headed out to a dance club, which was pretty cool. Once again, much drinking occurred. We're hanging out at the bar and I decided to take my camera out of my man purse and snap a couple of shots. As I was putting it back, I noticed this couple looking at me. I put the bag closer to my leg. I turned away to talk to Stefano for a couple of seconds, and when I turned back my bag was gone along with the couple. Fucking hell. I went to the front to talk to the bouncers. They said I'd come to the right place, that there'd already been another theft, and that they had a bead on the thieves. I waited out front for about 15 minutes and then saw as some of the bouncers were escorting the couple I'd seen earlier to another room. I grabbed one of them and said I recognized the girl as the one who'd been near me when my shit got pilfered. They told me to hold tight since they'd called the cops. A minute later they said I could pick up my bag with the coat check girl downstairs. I went down to get it and the girl gave me the bag... minus my camera and cell phone. The guy who stole it had that stuff on him and they're holding onto it until the cops come. Anyhow, the cops finally come around and the coat check girl comes up to the bar to get me and bring me down to this other room. I'm there with this other chick who had her wallet stolen and across the room is the couple being interrogated by the cops. She was really fired up and kept looking over at the couple and yelling shit like "You're getting what you deserve"
and "You're not laughing now, are ya?" Turns out the couple is Italian (of course). The English cops are being total hardasses when they're interrogating them and the girl just breaks down and starts crying up a storm. Very dramatic. Anyhow, I'm down there two and a half hours between identifying shit, waiting, and giving a statement. They ask to hold on to the cell phone and camera for evidence in case they need to go to trial, I say ok because I want them to get nailed for this. By the time I get out it's 4 am and everyone's gone. I get home about 5 o'clock and everyone's still awake. When I walk in the house everyone starts high-fiving me and patting me on the back. They said they saw some chick (the coat check girl) come up, point to me, and take me with her so they thought I was off banging her. That would've been legendary, just having some chick point to you and take you home. What am I, Hugh Hefner? That shit doesn't happen in real life. Instead I was hanging out with some fat English cop.

A couple of days later is the big wedding. The best part of the morning of the wedding was that 7 people (Stefano, Caterina, Anna, Michele, Bruno, Letizia, and me) not only had to share one bathroom, but washing up with the tube takes about 3 times as long as a normal shower. You have to get in some kind of prone position in the bathtub, rinse yourself off, soap yourself up, repeat, etc. Plus, the low water pressure makes your hair turn out all goofy after you wash it, kind of like that Seinfeld episode with the low flow showerheads where Kramer's hair is all flat. Awesome. The ladies especially loved the tube. Still, we managed to get to the site early and have a couple of pints at the pub across the street. The ceremony itself was great. The justice of the peace was formal and professional, but not cold. There were about 40-50 people there, Stefano was choking up, there were surprise notes from his friends, it was really nice. Afterward we hit the pub across the street for a couple of hours, then around 5 we headed over to Corum for the reception. The way we had negotiated, Stefano said he wanted to spend a total of 500 quid. So we figured about half on food and half on wine. Then he says how about 200 on food and 300 on wine? Then, a couple of minutes later he says how about 150 on food and 350 on wine? We had lots of bottles of wine and some crackers and hors d'oeuvres, so everyone was really lit. It's always fun to throw back a few glasses of wine with the elder Bresci. Plus I spent some quality time talking to Caterina's stepdad who is a Freudian psychoanalyst. Free therapy is great, especially when you're drunk. Anyhow, at about 1:30 a bunch of cabs came to take us home. Us and about 30 other people (not including the parents and family). That was great... 40 chain-smoking Italians partying it up in your house. I passed out in an upstairs bedroom with the door closed and woke up in the middle of the night coughing from the amount of smoke in my room. It was like I was on the set of Backdraft. That's my brother goddammit!!! You burned him Stephen!!!

The next day everyone who came into town for the wedding left and that evening Alex flew into town to hang out for three days. She'd never been to the UK before so I was going to be her tour guide for the London part of the trip. I didn't mention this earlier but I managed to get my old company Keynote to subsidize my trip by agreeing to do some server installations for them in London and Paris. The next day I manage to perform a server installation in the exciting town of St. Albans, lock myself out of Stefano's cell phone by trying to guess what his PIN code is since he didn't tell me (what the hell is a PUK code?), lose Alex with no way for her to get a hold of me, then finally find Alex. The day after we wake up to no power in the house which means, of course, a cold shower. Actually, it was a cold tube, which was even better. Turns out nobody paid the electric bill. I had to go down and recharge the power card at the local minimarket. We decide to take it easy just took the bus around London (I showed Alex where I got my nose pierced in Camden Town, we walked around the center, she had a rancid iced latte, etc.) and met up with her friend Roy later on in the evening for dinner and drinks. Between the dodgy Indian food and the rancid latte I think London left quite an impression on Alex.

Alex left with Roy on Saturday to tour around England and I sealed myself up in Stefano's house for the next 4 days. I hadn't gone to bed before 3 am since I arrived, which was 10 days ago. I was still waiting for word from Keynote on whether or not I'd be able to go to Paris because they hadn't shipped the servers yet. I was still trying to get a hold of the supervising officer so I could get my camera and cell phone back, which finally happened on Wednesday... a week and a half after the incident.

Stefano and Caterina returned on Wednesday after a well-rested, tanned week in Sardegna. They had 5 days to find a place to live before getting kicked out of the house. Stefano was explaining to me how he was just going to stay in his place until they found another one. He actually used the word "squat" which was cool if only for the fact that he said it with a thick Italian accent. I thought the last time anyone squatted was in Oklahoma in the 1870s. Anyway, I finally got the ok from Keynote that the servers would arrive in Paris on time so I booked my trip to leave on Friday. I called a hostel near the Louvre to try to book a bed for four nights, but let me explain something about my French-speaking abilities. You know when you go down to Fisherman's Wharf and some hapless Japanese tourist asks you for directions? Then you start talking to him and he gets this glazed-over look in his eyes as he's futilely trying to comprehend what you're saying. Then he tries to repeat what you told him and comes up with something like "then you... make left... at pancake... then go... then stop at dishwasher, yes?"
So you spend the next 10 minutes trying to help this guy and wondering if it's just a language problem or if maybe you should start looking for his guardian because he's a foreign retard. Well, that Japanese guy is me, except with French. So at the end of the phone conversation I could only hope I had a reservation and didn't order a pizza or donate an organ or something.

In spite of my language difficulties I managed to enjoy what is in my opinion one of the most beautiful cities in the world. Paris should really be seen by night to truly appreciate it. I don't think there's any other city that's lights up its monuments and historic buildings in a more striking fashion. Plus it always seems like there's something going on. Saturday night I was just wandering around and ended up hanging out at some kind of salsa dancing competition that was happening on the banks of the Seine. Sunday there was a very moving pictorial display outside the Jardin du Luxembourg commemorating the liberation of France at the end of WWII. Oh, and let me suggest that if you ever do go see pictures of wartime Paris that you don't follow it up by going to see Fahrenheit 9/11. I almost threw myself into the Seine.

Sunday night I get back to the hostel just looking to relax because I have to get up early in the morning to do an installation for Keynote. So it's about 11 and I'm just chilling out on my bunk reading my book when a new guy comes into the room and introduces himself. He's a dancer from Spain who's studying at some academy an hour and a half outside Paris and is in town for a week's vacation. He goes off to take a shower. I continue reading on my bunk. When he comes back he towels himself off and flops onto his bunk, buck naked. I'm thinking, okay, well, we're in Europe. So he's just hanging out, and I'm reading my book trying not to look over. Still, I can see out of the corner of my eye that this guy's not going to put any pants on. Eventually I shut off the light and try to get some sleep. About a half hour goes by and I can't sleep. At this point, I start to hear some... sounds. At first I think I must be mistaken, but after about 30 seconds there's no doubt what's going on in the
bunk below mine to my right. Okay, I'm not sure what to do here. I start
kind of shuffling and rustling, but that doesn't seem to stop this guy. Honestly, the thing I wanted to do most was just laugh out loud, but I decided to play it cool and try to wait it out. Well, this guy must be some kind of Spanish champion because he was going on for a while. Finally he decides to give it a rest right before the third bunkmate comes in. So after the third guy goes to bed I figure I'm safe. A few minutes pass by and I think no way this guy's going to start up again with two other guys in the room right? Wrong. So I'm wondering if the other guy's going to say anything or what, but it sounds like he's asleep. Anyhow, eventually he lets up and I get to sleep.

The next morning I'm having breakfast and the third roommate comes up to talk to me. He's French so he's speaking to me in somewhat broken English. He says "you know that new guy in our bunk? He was naked when I came in last night." I say yeah. Then he says "I think he was..." And he makes a gesture which transcends language, race and culture... the universal wanking gesture. And I laughed and said yeah, I'm pretty sure he was. Then he says "That's disgusting... I'm moving rooms!" Now, I could've moved rooms too, but I figured a) I'm leaving tomorrow and b) I'm meeting up with Luiz tonight so I'll probably be out late. So I leave and do my final installation and meet up with Luiz that evening at Les Deux Magots in front of the Eglise St. Germain. It's a famous cafe where Sartre and De Beauvoir hung out, which of course means my espresso cost 5 euros. We wandered around the Latin Quarter and ended up having an excellent dinner at someplace that Luiz had read about in Cool Restaurants Paris. Then we wandered down to the Pantheon, around the Seine, in front of Notre Dame, and in the area of Marais. Luiz spent most of the night trying to convince me to change my flight and get a one-way ticket back to San Francisco so I could hang out with him for a week in Paris.

I got back to the hostel around 2:30. I opened the door to my room and found all the lights on, The Spanish Wanker lying under a sheet wide awake with his glasses on, and the entire room smelling of Aloe Vera. I had no idea what to make of this scene so I quickly jumped up on my bunk, shut off the lights, and tried to sleep. It was just me and him. I decided that if he started up again I was going to tell him to take it to the toilet. It was like some kind of perverted showdown. Every time I heard him rustling or turning over I expected him to go for it. He never went at it, but I didn't get any sleep.

Now I'm back home, trying to recover from the flu that Roca brought me back from Brazil. I think I'm going to stay put for a while.

As always, the dude abides. From home.
Dave

The Foot F-ing Master

2004-06-10T17:25:00.000-07:00

Hey everybody,

Pictures here:

The foot f-ing master

Last time I left you I was about to leave Chiang Mai to head for a relaxing couple of weeks on the islands of the Samui archipelago in the Gulf of Thailand. My intention was to head straight for Ko Tao but I missed the last ferry. No problem... when I'm travelling I'm so adaptable my nickname should be Darwin. I ended up staying one night on Chaweng Beach on Ko Samui, which is the most happening (translation: touristy) spot on the most happening (translation: touristy) island in the area. Don't get me wrong, I love being overcharged for a room, blaring music and flashing lights all up and down the street, and being approached by ladyboys and bargirls trying to get me to come to a cabaret show. Fanfreakingtastic! I did manage to salvage the evening by grabbing my walkman and a lounge chair and lying on the beach listening to some music. I didn't realize how much I had missed the water. I really looked forward to the next couple of weeks on the islands.

The next day I headed to Ko Tao which is one of Thailand's top diving destinations. It's a fairly small island and from my stay there I'd say it's an excellent place to go and chill out for a few days. There's enough nightlife to keep things interesting but not so much that it's in your face. The beaches are not anything spectacular, but the diving and snorkelling are outstanding. The plan was to meet up with Rob as he was taking his open water course there, but the place where he was staying was all booked. I ended up staying at Big Blue resort which was recommended to me by my dive instructor in Australia. I splurged on a sweet aircon room with a double bed and a balcony. At about six o'clock there's a knock on my door. Rob is standing there with his buddy Steve and three bottles of Chang in his hands. Uh oh. Ko Tao has a pretty sweet setup at night. The bars are right out on the beach, and they put out these low tables surrounded by mats and cushions on which you can lie down. Then all around the perimeter they dig these holes where they put used beer bottles to serve as torches for mood lighting. I was happily drinking a beer with Rob and Steve and a few others when someone went and ordered a bucket. For some reason, buckets lead directly to injury for yours truly. As I was sitting down on one of the cushions, I slipped and fell and rolled backwards onto one of the torch pits, which I put out... with my leg. It was straight out of some Benny Hill sketch. I now have a "Ko Tao tattoo" on the back of my calf which will always remind me of my trip. I'm just grateful it wasn't some other body part. Rob went around telling everyone that it was my birthday so the whole bar sang me the birthday song. That was it though... cheap bastards didn't even buy me a round. Sure, it wasn't my birthday, but they didn't know that. I felt slighted.

I didn't get back until 2 AM and my alarm went off at 6:45. Maybe it wasn't a good idea to schedule my advanced certification dives for this particular morning. Damn you Beer Chang! Well, I managed to pass the rest of my dives and get my advanced open water diver certification, which means I can now molest acquatic life at a depth of 30 meters! Woohoo! Look out Nemo... here comes daddy!!! Hahaha! In spite of my Chang-induced glaze, one thing I was able to appreciate about the dives was the incredible visibility. I could swear at our first dive site it was something like 20 meters. The water was so clear and warm that I ended up diving without a wetsuit in my board shorts quite comfortably. I was able to see a reef shark as well on our first dive, which was wicked cool. I did a couple of fun dives the next day but the only thing I saw was a shitload of fins and snorkels. The dive sites are really crowded in the afternoon so all you're doing is dodging other divers. The next day I decided to break things up a bit by trying to kayak around the island. In the 95 degree midday sun. I had to turn back early because I had signed up for a night dive, and I think I was getting heatstroke, but I did get to see the north side of the island which is inaccessible by road. Unfortunately, it was not that interesting, just rocks and a bunch of trees. The night dive was extremely cool though. I almost got stuck in a crevice trying to follow the divemaster. My buoyancy sucks. The highlight was seeing a pufferfish. It looked just like it did on the Simpsons. You know, that episode where Homer eats blowfish at the sushi restaurant and they tell him he only has 24 hours to live. I couldn't get too close, though, because if they're forced to puff up it's really bad for their heart.

The next morning I left for Ko Phangan a broken shell of a man. I don't know if it was heat exhaustion, or overexertion from kayaking and diving, or bad panaeng curry, or what, but I was visited by my old friend the Vomitrhea Fairy during the night. Repeatedly. I blame it on the fact that someone at our table ordered a bucket after dinner. I didn't even drink any... its mere proximity guaranteed that something would happen to me. Upon my arrival in Ko Phangan I decided to head straight for Haad Rin to look for a place to stay. It's ground zero for the Full Moon party which was to occur in a few days. I was in no mood to carry around my backpack and look for a place to stay. Now whenever I had met other travellers in Thailand who were headed to the Full Moon party they all warned me not to go to Haad Rin... you'll never find a place to stay... it's crowded and noisy... it's dirty and chaotic... blah blah blah. They made it sound like they would've preferred to stay in downtown Baghdad.
When I got there, it was nothing like I expected. It's just a small village on the southeast corner of the island with one main street and two beaches opposite each other on a peninsula. Within a half hour I had found a bungalow right on the water on the quiet sunset side of the peninsula. I met up with Caroline and Jodie (from Manchester) whom I had met in Singapore and also with Matt (from Scotland) who had travelled with them through Malaysia. The next few days leading up to the Full Moon party were very relaxed, consisting mostly of sitting on the beach listening to music, hanging out in front of my bungalow watching the sunset over the water, and watching the nightly lightning displays across the sea. There's good nightlife over on the sunrise side of the peninsula with loads of beachfront bars and clubs offering all three types of music: House, Techno, AND Trance! woo hoo! I'm in heaven! I was very impressed by the firedancers that were out there. You know, the dudes twirling around the fire sticks and doing all sorts of acrobatics. They offer firedancing classes on the island, and if I'd had a few more days I'm sure I could've come away with at least 2nd degree burns. Especially if there were any buckets around. When you're hanging out at the bars on the beach, one thing you constantly have to watch out for are the kids trying to sell you glow sticks, bracelets, necklaces, and other shit. They'll sneak up behind you and wrap the necklace around your neck before you know what the hell is going on. They're like 5 year old ninjas or something. The Thai government could use these kids as assassins. Also, you can have your picture taken with any of the following animals: snakes, falcons, iguanas, and monkeys. Jodie had been chased back to her room by a wild monkey so when one of the picture dudes came up and put a monkey on her head the look on her face was one of utter terror. Heh heh. Another bonus about staying in Haad Rin is that it's like visiting two countries in one: Thailand and Israel. I wouldn't be surprised if Thai people actually felt like a minority. Every time I went to an internet cafe I'd have to switch the keyboard over from Hebrew to English. But that's neither here nor there.

For those of you not familiar with the Full Moon party, I'll do my best to describe it to you. In a word: chaos. We headed down to the beach around 11 o'clock. The streets were lined with bucket vendors. I began to fear for my life. Fortunately, I think some sort of magnetic field was created due to the sheer number of buckets floating around that allowed me to come away from the night unscathed. The beach was completely packed with people. The party seemed to be divided into three layers. The first layer was the people who were actually in or immediately around the bars and clubs. The second layer was the beach from the clubs to the shore which consisted of people either dancing or standing around and chatting, all equipped with buckets and/or beers. The third layer was the one close to the shore. That was the de facto walkway for the party that people would use to go along the beach and get from one bar to another. It was also where people went to pass out, so you had some kind of human obstacle course to negotiate as you were walking around. I guess there might even be a fourth layer which was the water. That seemed to be the popular place to have sex or just get naked. I've never been around such a large number of people who were high or drunk or both... at least a few thousand were there. I guess it was like a giant outdoor rave except everyone was wearing fisherman pants. There was the mandatory sighting of a dude in a Dr. Seuss hat and many people with facepaint. It would have been a very old testament moment had it started raining frogs and a tsunami came and washed us away.
I left at about 4:30 but came back to check out the scene at 10 in the morning. There were still people partying in a couple of the bars. The beach was a complete mess of empty beer bottles and plastic buckets mixed with other trash. I helped out a guy who had passed out on the beach, but surprisingly he was the only casualty I saw. Maybe the other ones had already been cleared away by the time I got there.

After a recovery day in Haad Rin, we decided to head to Haad Yuan for a couple of days. It's right next to Haad Rin, but it's very secluded and can only be reached by boat. It was a very relaxing place to spend my last couple of days on the islands. It's a very short strip of beach with nothing but clear, warm water and lounge chairs. No internet stations, no shops, only the restaurants run by the resorts. It was tough to leave, not just because of the environment but also because of the cool crew of Caroline, Jodie and Matt. I flew out from Samui to Bangkok where I had a few hours to head into town and meet up with my travel guardian angel Alex before my flight to London. We hadn't seen each other in a couple of years but she helped me out a great deal by giving me advice on where to go and what to do in every country I visited and by hooking me up with some great people in New Zealand. She's been travelling for a couple of years so we had a lot to catch up on, plus now I had a Bangkok tour guide, so I decided to stay an extra day and fly to London the following night. So I got to see a bit of the Thai capital and enjoyed some excellent company on my last day in Thailand. We didn't make it to the ping pong show because Alex had already been twice and she was afraid three times could be classified as a fetish. We both got a foot massage, which was actually relaxing, but I kept thinking of that scene between Jules and Vincent in Pulp Fiction...

Jules: It ain't no fuckin' ballpark either. Now look, maybe your method of massage differs from mine, but touchin' his wife's feet, and stickin' your tongue in her holyiest of holies, ain't the same ballpark, it ain't the same league, it ain't even the same fuckin'
sport. Foot massages don't mean shit.
Vincent: Have you ever given a foot massage?
Jules: Don't be tellin' me about foot massages - I'm the foot fuckin' master.
Vincent: Given a lot of 'em?
Jules: Shit yeah. I got my technique down and everything, I don't be tickling or nothin'.
Vincent: Would you give a guy a foot massage?
Jules: Fuck you.
Vincent: You give them a lot?
Jules: Fuck you.
Vincent: You know, I'm getting kinda tired, I could use a foot massage.
Jules: Man, you best back off, I'm gittin' pissed.

Ha ha ha! Yeah, I know it's rude, but if you've read this far I figure you're hardcore.

Now I'm in London with Stefano and it's like I had seen him yesterday. We put my bags down at his place and he says "okay, let's go to a pub and get a Guinness. Then I want to hear about the women." I fear single Stefano. Then we spent the afternoon catching up in a park drinking Stella. It's weird though, because I thought I'd feel some kind of shock at coming back to someplace familiar, but I almost feel like I've never left. Time has passed so quickly... I think I'll be ready to take off again soon. Heh heh. Anyhow, I don't know if I'll be doing anything all that interesting in the next few weeks before coming home other than hanging out on the beach in Italy, but I'll try to come up with something to keep y'all entertained.

As always, the dude abides,
Dave

No Pai, No Gain

2004-05-25T17:08:00.000-07:00

Hey everybody,

Pictures here:

No Pai, no gain

Greetings from the land of stray dogs and fearless chickens! I think I'm enjoying my first couple of weeks being 31. I like to tell people I'm 31. It sounds more authoritative than 30, like I know what I'm doing. Maybe because it's a prime number. I don't know.

Last time I left you I was in Chiang Mai, where the night before I took off I went to see some Muay Thai kickboxing. For those of you not familiar with Muay Thai, it's like boxing except with kicking and knees and elbows. There were something like 8 bouts that we (I went with some friends from the cooking school) watched. The fighters ranged in weight from 100-140 lbs, and some of them looked like they were as young as 11 years old. These guys are lightning fast and most of the fighting involves kicks to the midsection and knees to the midsection while grappling. Every once in a while someone gets an elbow to the head. There were two knockouts. There's a lot of ceremony involved before each bout, and during the fight there's a band that plays some drums and some kind of clarinet-type instrument along with the fight. My favorite fight of the night was the one involving the white guy. I guess the Thais like any excuse to have foreigners fighting in the ring because it was billed as a "special match." This dude's name was Mark and he weighed about 160 lbs. His opponent (the Thai fighter) had that look about him like they only drag him out to fight the foreigners. He was chubby, out of shape, and looked like he'd just been woken up. He gave that vibe like he'd be more comfortable on a recliner with a beer in his hand watching reruns of the Thai version of Cops. Anyway, the fight was a sloppy free for all which the Thai dude eventually won, but it was heavy on the entertainment factor.

The next day I headed to a village in the northwest of Thailand called Pai where I stayed for a week. Pai is a slow-moving, remote village full of hippies and granolas. It's a place where people go for a couple of days and end up staying a few months. This guy named David at our guesthouse had been there for 5 months and was now working as a part-time ambulance driver and playing guitar at the local bar. One night when it was raining he came to pick us up from a bar in the ambulance with the lights and siren going. Anyhow, the guesthouse where I stayed was right along the Pai river and I got a private bungalow along the water. The first night I was there the owner Rick was hanging out with a bunch of his friends out in the courtyard and invited me over to hang out with them. A couple of them were playing guitar and singing which was a cool way to spend my first evening. Most of them were Thai songs, but they eventually busted out with Hotel California which sadly seems to be the universal acoustic jam song. They were all singing at the top of their lungs, which was great for me but probably not for the other guests trying to sleep. I probably met more Americans in Pai than I have during the rest of my trip combined. Lek and John from San Francisco and this dude from Seattle named Rob whom I ended up hanging out with most of the week. Lek and John were same sex marriage #2600 at city hall in SF and it was cool to hear the story about how they had to wait in line for hours and tons of supporters were coming to give them food, coffee, etc.

My first Pai (pronounced pie) adventure came courtesy of Rick's brother in law, a dude named Thip, who does tours of northwest Thailand using offroad motorcycles. You see where this is going. I'm asking all of you nicely not to relay any of this next story back to my grandma. So he's telling me that I can take a 2-day trip with him through the forest and the mountains and up along the Myanmar (aka Burma) border. It seemed like a good idea at the time... I mean I have a motorcycle back home, I know how to ride, how hard can it be? I was thinking, you know, dirt roads and shit. My first warning should've been the morning we were leaving when this monsoon came down and soaked everything. It stopped raining after about an hour and Thip said "no problem." (Side note: activities in Thailand don't let themselves get bogged down in pesky things like liability forms and insurance. Basically, I handed over the cash and he handed over the bike. I'm surprised I got a helmet.) So we take off. Within the first hour I was covered in a combination of mud and sweat, the latter being both from physical exertion and terror. I came to realize that off road means dirt roads, and rocks, and streams, and rocks, and mud, and fields, and more rocks. There was a lot of 45+ degree incline involved. Once you come to terms with the fact that the bike is constantly fishtailing, it gets easier.
Thip was a great guide... for the 3 seconds I could keep him in my field of vision. He kept zipping around corners, up hills, around banks, so that I couldn't see where I was supposed to go. A couple of times I almost got lost. Well, I don't want to make it sound like it was all terrifying. We rode through four hill tribe villages, which was very cool. In one of them we passed by a school where the kids all stopped and waved at us as we passed by. I only remember that because I almost fell off the bike as I tried to wave back. We climbed high up into the mountains of northwest Thailand where there are some spectacular views of the countryside. As we were making one of these climbs, this disturbing amount of white smoke began to flow from Thip's bike's engine. Shit. We barely reached the next village where we had to pull over to look at the damage. Well, I guess technically pulling over would require a road, but you know what I mean. Of course, it now starts to rain again, so we haul Thip's bike under the house of the village doctor. The village was practically empty but Thip managed to borrow some tools from some locals so he could open up the engine. Some sprocket that powered the mechanism to feed the oil had completely lost all its teeth. Thip's bike was toast. 2 of us... 1 bike left... I quickly used my mathematical genius to realize what this meant. The next hour was possibly one of the most physically uncomfortable of my life. There was nowhere safe to sit... the choice was between a constant wedgie or a constant groin pull. Two full grown men are not supposed to fit on a 250cc bike. Did I mention we were still off road? It was also raining, which wasn't so bad because it washed the mud off. We finally reached Mae Hong Son about an hour before dusk where we had some dinner. I felt bad for Thip because he seemed very distraught about his bike. He only has three of them and it costs a lot of money to fix or replace them since everything has to be imported from Japan. So instead of going to a guesthouse I agreed to spend the night at his friend Loei's apartment building where I enjoyed watching the Thai version of Who wants to be a millionaire. It actually turned out to be kind of cool spending the evening with a Thai family. Plus it seemed to make Thip feel better to chatter his frustration away in Thai. The only drawback was that I had to sleep in the toolshed because there wasn't enough room in the house.

The next day we checked out the longneck Karen village nearby, which I didn't dig too much because it was like a zoo. You know the longnecks, the women with all the rings around their neck that makes them unnaturally long. Anyway, it was a weird atmosphere with people staring at them and the villagers trying to get you to buy their stuff, so we left after a few minutes for the long road back to Pai. We took the paved road, which was good, but it took 3 hours, which was bad.

This seemed like a good time to try my first Thai massage, because there were muscles that were sore from the ride that I didn't even know I had. Okay, I'll be honest, I'm not a big fan of the massages, but I figured if I ever needed one it was now. I went to a shop that Thip recommended to me. So, about an hour into the massage the lady goes to me "why you no sleep?" I'm thinking... exactly when was I supposed to be sleeping? When you were digging your thumbs into my groin muscle? Perhaps when your elbow was jammed into the back of my neck? At one point during the massage she was trying to twist me into some supposedly relaxing position (not realizing that I'm the most inflexible human being alive) when she stopped, looked at me and yelled "farang something" in Thai. Then later she tried some weird maneuver on me where my legs were over my head and she climbed up and had her knees into my hamstrings. She slipped and fell and gave me a knee to the midsection. She laughed for two whole minutes. That was my last Thai massage.

The other thing I tried while I was in Pai was Muay Thai kickboxing. Rob found out about this place where you just show up and pay for a day's training. It lasts about two hours, which is enough. I met this artist from SF named Jeff there who had set up a studio in Pai and had been there for 4 months. He's having an exhibition in November at Hang gallery in case anyone's interested in going with me. Oh, and Jeff informed me that Beer Chang contains formaldehyde. I should be quite well-preserved when I get home. Anyway, the gym was a covered outdoor training area and ring in this valley with spectacular views of the surrounding mountains. I ended up going for two sessions and I wish it could've been more.
One of the highlights of my trip to Thailand so far is working on a heavy bag while a monsoon is pouring down rain all around me. There was thunder and lightning and I just had to stop for a minute to soak it all in. Talk about unforgettable memories. The instructors, Birt and Sun, didn't speak any English, but they made themselves understood. They were these two short, stocky, fierce-looking Thai dudes who looked like they'd taken a few elbows to the face. They called me Dep since they couldn't really pronounce Dave. They were fascinated by my chest hair, which I guess is not common among Thais. There were these two kids training with them, and they'd point to my chest and laugh. I think it was because of the hair, anyway. The training was pretty intense for guys having no experience. They put you to work on the bags right away then put you in the ring to practice with an instructor with pads. By my second day I was already learning some kind of spinning elbow strike (wicked!). I now feel like I could hold my own for AT LEAST 30 seconds in the ring with an 11-year-old. Of course, there are some other fond memories from the training, such as:
-Skin rubbed off bottom of both big toes -Bruised and swollen shins -Trembling of the right hand -Bruised and swollen knees -Skinned, bruised, and swollen left elbow Okay, that last one didn't have to do with the kickboxing. It was a result of falling down some stairs at a bar and then falling off a scooter later that night. This was related to my first experience with a Thai "bucket." (Thank you Rob) But that is a story for another time. Maybe Pai wasn't so mellow.
Really, though, I was sad to leave. I can see why people can end up spending so much time there. I was treated like family by the folks at Baan Tawan guesthouse. Thip told me that if I come back to Pai I can stay for free at his house and work with him in the offroad motorcycle business. He offered me 20%.

Rob and I left Pai together and headed back to Chiang Mai. From there he headed south to Ko Tao and I headed north to Chiang Rai. Let me say this about Chiang Rai: If you ever come to Thailand, don't bother. How can I put it... if Chiang Mai is Vegas, then Chiang Rai is Reno. There's nothing to it. I should've known when all the Lonely Planet could say about it is "Ummm... there are some temples!" I think the guesthouse I was staying at was one of those places that people can rent hourly. When I paid the manager for my room he didn't even ask me for my name. The highlight of my day was being propositioned by the middle-aged hooker in room 3. I was hoping to line up a two day trek, but I went to three companies that said I was the only person so far who was interested. Low season, I was told. So I visited the Hill Tribe museum which had a really cool exhibit on the history of opium, but also cured me of any remaining desire I had to go trekking. I felt like I'd learned enough about the tribes without having to be a voyeur.

So I left Chiang Rai as quickly as possible, but where to? I decided to go to Mae Sai, the northernmost city in Thailand, and cross the border into Myanmar (aka Burma). Why not? It seemed like something to do. Plus, I would get the added bonus of being able to begin conversations with "Did I ever tell you about the time I was in Myanmar (aka Burma)?" I'd could sound like J. Peterman! After having done it, though, I wouldn't necessarily recommend going unless it's to renew your Thai visa and/or to buy some really cheap stuff in Myanmar (aka Burma). There's this outdoor market set up just over the border where as soon as you cross you're assaulted by cigarette vendors. You can buy real CDs (from China) for about 2 dollars each. I bought a CD of Cuban music, if only to say that I bought a Cuban music CD when I crossed from Thailand into Myanmar (aka Burma). Doesn't that just sound cool? You get hidden surprises, though. I thought I was getting a 2-CD set of Norah Jones but it turns out only one is hers. If anyone wants Avril Lavigne's latest album, just say the word. Also, you can buy some monkey skulls if you have the urge. I was tempted, but I wasn't sure if I'd have to declare it. I mean, wouldn't it be cool to have a bunch of monkey skulls just so you could serve jello in them and say they're "chilled monkey brains" like in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom?

Well, now I'm back in Chiang Mai for the night and tomorrow I'm flying down to Ko Tao to meet up with Rob. I think I've done enough in the north and now it's time for some island beach and some diving. I hope my next travelogue will be more boring because it'll mean I've been relaxing.

As always, the dude abides,
Dave

A Brief Moment of Introspection....

2004-05-13T17:01:00.000-07:00

Hi everybody,

Pictures here:

A brief moment of introspection...

If you'd told me 3 years ago that I'd be in Chiang Mai, Thailand to celebrate my 31st birthday, I'd have thought you were insane. Even if you'd told me that last year I wouldn't have believed it. Hey, this isn't a plea for birthday wishes because if you all sent them to me I wouldn't reply to everybody then I'd feel bad about it. Actually, I just wanted to say thanks to all of you. I wouldn't be here without the love and support of my family and friends and I attribute where I am (physically and mentally) as much to all of you as I do to myself.

Okay, enough of that shit and on to the good stuff. Last time I left you I'd just arrived in Perth after a strange adventure across the Nullarbor. I ended up extending my stay by a few days and not flying out until the 6th. I think it was mostly because I couldn't get enough of watching Zak and Ronan play pool. Riveting stuff. For a city that at first glance didn't seem like it had spectacular nightlife how we ended up staying out until 5 something like 3 nights in a row is beyond me. It must have had something to do with Ronan's hypnotic dancing style.
He has a rhythm and grace which can only be described as Treebeard-esque. Zak and I also had a memorable night out with these three Swiss girls we met on the Nullarbor trip and three local dudes. We somehow managed to pile 8 people into one of the guys' tiny car (it might've been a Ford Festiva) and drive around for half an hour looking for some club. It was like a clown car. Perth is actually a very nice city and I had a great time. It's not right on the ocean, but it's built on the Swan River which leads out west to the Indian Ocean. One of the days we took a ferry ride out to Fremantle along the Swan, saw loads of dolphins along the ferry, along with many 50+ million dollar houses along the water. Apparently Perth has the most millionaires of any Australian capitol. I'll never forget that I bought my first pair of designer jeans there. Although I didn't pay a hundred bucks for them (I'm talking to you Kelli). Thank you for the help Roisin, I'll think of you every time I use the jaws of life to take them off.

From Perth I flew in to Singapore, and at the last minute decided to spend a few days there to check it out. I don't know if it was the fact that I was leaving some cool new friends behind, or that I was going to a new country, or the malaria tablets I was taking, or what, but I hated it. The three longest days of my trip, bar none. Singapore is good for those of you who find Los Angeles a bit too rustic.
It's a business district, surrounded by a shopping mall, surrounded by highrises. And it's hot and humid. Woohoo! Wait, it gets better. Jason (this guy I met in the hostel) and I decided to check out the nightlife one night. So we took a cab over to one of the main clubbing/bar roads. When the cab almost hit 4 drunk people walking across the street, we knew we were in the right place. I just wanted a couple of beers, so we looked for someplace that had no cover charge. We found the one (1) place that was free to get in. I went up to the bar and ordered two beers.
The dude pours me two thimblefuls of Carlsberg and says "20 dollars." That was the end of my bar hopping in Singapore. I won't go into detail about my mind-numbing day on Orchard road. I just wanted a pair of tennis shoes. That's all. Some of you know how much I dislike shopping, but this was like my personal hades. It wasn't just one shopping mall, but like 18 of them in a row. On each side of the road.
I felt like I was in Groundhog Day. There are a couple of good things about Singapore though: the food is cheap and good, the coffee is good, and they have very high quality air conditioning. Also, for those dorks like me on this mailing list, I went to see this Lord of the Rings exhibition that had all this behind the scenes shit plus real weapons and costumes. Wicked cool.

You wouldn't believe how much I was looking forward to getting to Thailand. I flew to Bangkok and hopped on another flight to Chiang Mai in the north. So far, I am loving it. I got picked up from the airport in a tuk-tuk, which is like a giant motorized tricycle with a canopy. My first introduction to Thai traffic was like an amusement park ride. There's not really any lanes here, or right of way, or any of that shit that gets in the way when you have to get from point A to point B. There's stoplights, but they're optional. Somehow, though, it all works out. I haven't seen an accident in 5 days. Not like I would drive myself though. Not to get too deep or anything (not that it's possible for me anyway), but it's kind of an allegory for how everything works around here. There aren't a lot of rules, which would make you think it's chaotic, but everything seems to have achieved some sort of balance. So does that make it actually orderly? Wrap your head around that paradox, baby!
See, I educate as well as entertain. Another thing I've discovered is my new favorite beer, Beer Chang. The reason I like it is because the alcohol level is 6.4%, yet it's the cheapest beer in Thailand. I've also heard that 6.4 is the MINIMUM percentage and it could actually go as high as 14%. I was pondering the vicissitudes of variable alcohol beer last night (while drinking 3 Beer Changs) when I realized that you could make an absolute killing importing the stuff and selling it to college students in the US! Of course, the drawback to the strength of the beer is what I've dubbed the Changover. I had a hard time getting up this morning. As for what I've been doing the last few days: Thai Cooking course, my friends. That's right ladies, as if I wasn't irresistible enough, I can now add Thai master chef to the old resume. Tomorrow... vegetable carving. I'll think of all of you as I'm making a rose out of a tomato.

So far, the only person I've had longer than a 5-minute conversation with is the tuk-tuk guy that operates out of my guesthouse named Intha. He's in his mid to late 50s and works driving the tuk-tuk and doing odd jobs around the guesthouse. Actually, I'm not sure how many people work in the guesthouse and how many are just hanging out. There's anywhere between two and seven people hanging out by the outside bar/reception area. Anyway, Intha taught himself English by reading and watching movies. There were 7 kids in his family and since schools in Thailand cost money they couldn't afford to send all of them to school. He's been to Bangkok once and never outside Thailand. He taught me a very valuable lesson: If you're going to get a Thai massage, make sure it's done by an old lady, preferably a blind one.
He said the young girls don't know what they're doing, although they're the ones who are always on the sidewalk trying to get you to go in. Speaking of young girls, Chiang Mai doesn't have the greatest nightlife, but I did see a strip of bars as I was walking around one afternoon and decided to check it out in the evening. As I walked by I started to wonder why there were so many Thai girls sitting either alone or with old white guys. Oh. *Oh*. Sometimes it takes me a while.

I do have to admit that I have discovered an irresistible nighttime activity... the Chiang Mai night bazaar. This one street is lined with vendors which open from 4pm until midnight selling all sorts of clothes, knicknacks, and knockoffs. I suck at haggling. My first interaction with a vendor went something like this:
Me-How much is that shirt?
Vendor-99 baht.
Me-Um, okay.
I can't help it. I think I'm still getting ripped off, but I can't get too fired up about 50 cents. I'm getting loads of those really light cotton shirts that I'm sure I'll never wear when I get home. Also, I'm pretty sure I'm going to put on about 20 lbs before I get home because the food is so cheap. For 100 baht (about $2.50) I got spring rolls, mussel salad, naan bread, and an iced coffee the other night. There's always the danger of getting a gristle stick though, as I did yesterday. Carefully examine all barbecued "meat", that would be my advice to you.

A couple of my other highlights have included eating durian for the first time (yeah, it stinks, but it tastes pretty good) and having a 15 minute conversation with a Thai student who wanted to practice his English. He told me about a few places to check out in the area and kept asking me if I was going to try "lighting bamboo." I couldn't figure out what the hell he was talking about. What is that some sort of firewalking ceremony? Then I figured out he meant *riding* a bamboo raft down the river.

As always, the dude abides.
Dave

I Know It's Been a While...

2004-05-01T16:39:00.000-07:00

... since I last wrote but I've been out of commission. I spent some time in the hospital recently to have a dangerous mole removed from my penis. That's the last time I'm shagging one of those! Ha ha ha!!!

Sorry, I couldn't resist that one. My buddy Zack told it to me. That's the kind of shit you get into when you spend 9 days with someone camping across Southern Australia. But more on that later.

Pictures here:

I know it's been a while...

Last time I wrote I was heading for Alice Springs, smack in the middle of Australia. As the plane descended into "The Alice" the first thing that came to my mind was Needles, California. The only reason I even know about Needles is because it's in the middle of freakin' nowhere. That pretty much sums up Alice Springs as well. It's like being in the middle of Death Valley, except everything is red. I was only there one day before my Uluru tour, so besides enjoying the 100+ degree desert heat I didn't do much. The next day I headed out at 5 AM for a 3-day trip around the red center's most famous natural landmarks: Uluru (Ayers Rock), Kata Tjuta (The Olgas), and Kings Canyon. I have never seen as many sunrises cumulatively in my lifetime as I have the last three weeks. These camping tour guides are like freakin drill sergeants. Our guide was a French expat named David. Most of the three days was spent driving because everything was so damned far away. There were about 20 people on this trip and it's the most Americans I've seen thus far: 6 exchange students on holiday from the University of Queensland. Anyway, probably most of you have seen Uluru from postcards or pictures or whatever, but it's an impressive sight to behold in person. I have to admit that the first thing I thought of when I saw it was that it looked like a giant nipple. I guess if the whole of Australia was a big breast, Uluru could be the nipple. It's right there in the middle, it's round, flat, and reddish brown. Come on, admit it. I could work for the Australian tourism bureau. Anyway, I didn't climb to the top because The Rock is sacred to the three local Aboriginal tribes and they ask that you don't climb it. Since it's controlled by the Australian government, however, you are still allowed to climb.
Three people from the group went ahead and climbed it anyway and the rest of us went on a base walk with David. He's really in with the local Aboriginals so he showed us some of the drawings in the rock, what they meant, and taught us some words in the local dialect. At night we camped out in swags, which are these kind of tent/mattress hybrids made for one person. Like I said earlier, up at 5 the next morning to catch the sunrise at Kata Tjuta. It's a good call for a few reasons: sunrises on these monoliths are spectacular, you beat the crowds from the countless other tours, and you don't get beaten down by the ridiculous desert heat. At sunrise, the rock looks so RED. I had to go up and touch it to make sure it didn't rub off. It's because the rocks have a high ferrous content that makes them more red than normal rock. The number one thing I'll remember from the red center, though, is how beautiful the sky was. You really never hear about that, but it's awesome. It's the biggest sky I've ever seen as you can see the horizon in all directions, and it's a beautiful blue with fluffy flat-bottomed clouds stretching as far as the eye can see. Stunning. The number two thing I'll remember about the red center are all the damned flies. It was unbelievable. Once the sun came up, they swarmed all over you. There was no defense for it. And they were ballsy flies too, not the type that'll go away after just a wave of the hand. I have a picture of my back just covered with the freakin things.

I stayed a couple of days in Alice Springs before taking the Ghan train ride down to Adelaide. If you ever go to Australia, make sure you minimize your time in Alice Springs. There is nothing to do there. The only entertainment I got was from listening to the stories of my roommates in what was possibly the shittiest hostel in Australia. My roommates were a Scottish guy, a Dutch guy, and two Irish girls who were traveling together but had run out of money in Alice Springs. They were working odd jobs to save up to get out of there. The Scottish guy was complaining to me that they were having trouble saving money and it was taking them a long time. Well, maybe if you didn't go through two cases of beer and 5 packs of cigarettes a day you might be able to save a little more you dumbshit. They also decided that the room's kitchen was their personal area so there was some rice and pasta of indeterminate age in the sink that didn't get cleaned the whole time I was there.

I was glad to get moving to Adelaide. The train ride was uneventful. I helped an old lady with her crossword puzzles. That was the highlight. Adelaide was a cool city though. It has a compact city center that is easy to walk around. The hostel I stayed at was run by these two old dudes who served free ice cream and apple pie every evening at 8. There'd be a scrum every night when the apple pie was served... it was like a bunch of little kids. Good pie though. I did a day tour of the Barrossa Valley which is one of the best wine producing regions of Australia. The trip was cool, although as you'd expect there were a couple of poseurs on there who thought they knew everything about wine. They were the ones who ended up passed out on the bus at the end of the day. Our guide Matt has a master's in viticulture and his family owns a vineyard in the valley. It was a really good value as we ended up tasting about 25 different wines. Plus, there was barbecued kangaroo for lunch.
Mmmm.

I don't know where to begin to describe my 9-day camping trip from Adelaide to Perth across the Nullarbor plain, so maybe I'll use bullet points or something.
-There were ten people on the tour: 4 English, 2 Irish, 1 German, 1 Japanese, 1 Swiss, and me.
-Our guide, Jake, looked a lot like Kit. He was tall, gangly, and loped instead of walking. He loves the outdoors, though, and he's a vegan, so maybe he's more like a bizarro version of Kit.
-We travelled a total of 4040 Kilometers, so there was a lot of bus time.
-The natural sights were something incredible to behold. The Great Australian Bight looked like it was a painting. We went swimming in a lake that was in a cave below the Nullarbor plain. We stayed a day and a half at LeGrand national park which had some of the most beautiful white sand beaches I've ever seen. The sand contained so much silica that it squeaked when you walked on it. We got to drive through an area where the rangers were doing a controlled burn at night which was wicked cool. I have shitloads of great pictures.
-The German girl was insane. First, on day 2, she took off her top and tried to flag down an 18-wheeler.
Day 6 she was skinny dipping in the underground lake.
By day 8 she stripped down completely naked at a truck stop because it had a gag sign that said Nudist Crossing and she wanted her picture taken in front of it.
-I mooned truckers twice. The first time was from the front seat of the bus and it was just me. I kind of got into it and was dubbed "the ass slapper" for the rest of the trip. Hey, if you're going to do it, have a good time no? The second time Jake told the truckers on the radio that the German was going to flash them as we drove by, but instead all the guys stuck pulled their pants down and slapped their asses as we went by the trucks. They told me they were just following my example. The truckers were not amused.
-We met an old English ex-biker who's crossing the Nullarbor on a horse and cart with his dog. He fancies himself a "bush poet" and recited some of his poetry for us. It was filthy. I bought one.
-One of the English girls, Sarah, all she did was eat.
She always shoved her way to the front of the food line and didn't lift a hand to help with anything. I dubbed her Ms. Pac Man. Waka waka!
-Bush camping is a really interesting experience. The sunrises are unreal because there's nothing but landscape around you. The worst part is having to take a crap in a dug up hole. Jake insisted that we do everything in the hole because it's less disruptive to the environment. The hole took on a life of its own. After a while, we had some pretty good running jokes about what you're supposed to do in the hole.
-I made really good friends with an English dude named Zack and an Irish couple Ronan and Roisin. We're all staying together at a hostel in Perth. We drank many cases of Tooheys on the trip and probably know more about each other than we should. Zack and Ronan call me The Beast, which is better than ass slapper. Anyway, I've got a place to stay in Leicester, Dublin, and Galway if I need it. Sweet as.
-Zack is a machine. We went up this mountain that was supposed to be a three hour return climb. The rest of us stopped about halfway and then headed back down because we only had an hour and a half to do it. Zack came back fifteen minutes late. He had made it all the way up the mountain and back, met some girls from a tour group, and arranged for us to meet them at a bar in Perth on Saturday night.
-I have a newfound appreciation for the mighty wombat.

I'm sure there's loads of stuff that I'm forgetting but this message is already long enough. I have some unbelievable pictures from this trip which I will definitely post when I get back. Hope everyone's doing well. I'll be in Perth a few more days so I'll try to respond to your messages if I haven't yet.

As always, the dude abides.
Dave

How I Almost Won 500 Bucks

2004-04-15T16:32:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone,

Pictures here:

How I almost won 500 bucks

When I last wrote you I had just arrived in Airlie Beach, Queensland, which is the northeastern part of Australia. I was there barely one night before I left for a 3-day, 2-night sailing trip around the Whitsunday Islands. Although, the night I was there I somehow ran into Lior again and we went out for a couple of beers. One of the bars called Magnum's had female jelly wrestling that night, so of course we had to stick around for that. Let me tell you something... women can be vicious when they're wrestling in jelly for cold hard cash.

I have to say that the sail was one of the highlights of my trip so far. I've really enjoyed, both in NZ and here, the opportunities to get out amongst nature and enjoy some of the things that make a country unique much more than my time in the cities. The sailboat was called the Ragamuffin II, a 56-foot sloop that used to be used for racing. The captain went by the name Splash, and the assistant was a Kiwi named Craig. There were only 10 of us on the boat which was great because there was plenty of room to roam. There was plenty of snorkelling to be done as the coral was very shallow and the marine life extremely abundant. We had to wear these body suits to protect us from the box jellyfish which are about the size of your pinky fingernail but have a lethal dose of venom. I didn't mind so much, except on the first day the suit I wore irritated my skin for some reason. When I came out of the water and took off the suit I had some sort of crazy rash all over my body. Not only that but my hands had swollen up to like twice their normal size.
I looked like I could've been Woods' brother with these thick stumpy fingers. I was very concerned that I wouldn't be able to get my hands around a beer can, but luckily the swelling went down by the evening. I think I was the only one who didn't have any problems getting to sleep, as I found the rocking and the sound of the waves soothing. Hey, I'm a Viareggino, we have salt water in our veins. The next day we headed to Whitehaven beach where the sand is 99% silica. This is supposed to make it extremely bright and white in the sunshine, which I couldn't verify for you because it was raining all morning. Luckily, by the afternoon things cleared up as we were sailing to another harbor. For those of you who've never been on a sailboat, it's bitchin' when the boat is angling at like 45 degrees down into the water and you're cruising along. We snorkelled again that afternoon (different stinger suit) and I found myself among a school of what looked like transparent sardines.
There were like 200 of them. I chased them around for like 5 minutes... they'd all change course at once to try and avoid me. The next day Splash took us to this resort island called South Molle Island. 5 of us went and played a round of golf at the 9 hole course they had on the island. I've never played golf before with no shirt and no shoes. Judge Smails would've slapped an injunction on me.

They reserved a table for us that night at Magnum's so we all got together for pizza and beers. For 40 bucks Aus we got 4 large pizzas and two pitchers! Anyway, this night they were having a pole dancing competition so I told everybody that if I entered it I would win. Of course, I didn't think they allowed dudes to enter. I mean, who wants to see a guy pole dancing? Well, apparently the folks at Magnum's do. It was too late to back out at this point, and besides they were offering $500 to the winner. Plus, you all know that I'm an exhibitionist at heart, so what the hell. The whole team from Ragamuffin II was there so I had my own cheering section and they also helped me out with my dance strategy. So around 10:30 I was whisked away to the VIP area of the bar where I was given free champagne along with the other contestants. I was the only guy in the competition, of course. So the time comes for them to call us down and I'm sitting there on this stairwell waiting for the competition to start. All the girls were so nervous but to me it was no big deal. I figure the worse that could happen would be that I look like a jackass, but a) I'm leaving tomorrow and b) I could win 500 bucks. So one girl goes first and does a passable dancing routine.
My number is called next. I wanted to go last so as I could leave a lasting impression with the audience, but that's the way it goes. There were about 200 people in the bar and I couldn't even tell you what music they played for me. I decided I was going to pull out all the stops so I charged in there and started workin' that pole baby! But when you're going for money, you've got to go for the gold, so I started losing clothes. First, my t-shirt went flying into the audience. Next, the pants exited stage left so I was dancing around in my red Calvin Klein boxers. But I knew that it wouldn't be enough to ice first place, so I had a secret weapon. One of the guys from the boat by the name of Chris gave me some props to use while I was dancing. First, I had a pair of illuminated devil horns that I was wearing on my head. But the big guns had to come out for the grand finale. I whipped off my Calvins and bam! Unleashed the tiger print g-string! I didn't ask Chris why he had a tiger print g-string to loan me. For some reason, it just made sense. The cool thing about it was that it had some kind of electronic speaker built in so that when you squeezed it growled. But you couldn't really hear it onstage, unfortunately.
Anyway, I'm sitting there waving my boxer shorts over my head in a g-string and I'm thinking I've got this competition nailed. They did the voting by who got cheered the loudest and I actually came in a respectable 3rd place. But let me tell you why dudes will never win pole dancing competitions. (I can't believe I just typed that last sentence). First of all, you're competing against women named Jasmine and Bambi (no joke, they're the ones who beat me). I should've told them my name was Amber. Second, no guys are going to cheer for another guy when he's pole dancing, especially if he's wearing a tiger print g-string. So you've got only 50% of the audience at most. Lastly, two words: fake boobs. Hey, I would've voted for Bambi too. The cool part was that I became some kind of minor celebrity that night. I had people coming up to me saying they thought I should've won, I got the loudest cheers, etc. One of the boat crew took some pictures for me, although he didn't take any when I was in my g-string (thankfully). Another guy actually videotaped the whole thing so I expect it to be up on the internet any day now (so much for my presidential aspirations). I keep having flashbacks to that night when I'm trying to go to sleep.

After the pole dancing incident I quickly left town and headed to Cairns. Cairns is very touristy, I would come to find out. There's souvenir shops, restaurants, cafes, bars, and tourist agencies lining just about every street. To be honest with you, I didn't like the city so much because it doesn't seem to have much character. It seems like a lot of people, especially backpackers, just go there to get hammered and hang out on the lagoon during the day. Still, I was there to get my open water scuba certification, which turned out to be awesome. There were two days of training in the classroom and pool. My instructor was a guy named Steve who used to work in the UK as a fluid dynamics engineer for Williams' formula 1 team. He's also a karate instructor, but we just called him Scuba Steve. I loved every second of it, even the pool time, but the real excitement came on the three day liveaboard boat trip out to the Great Barrier Reef. I didn't take any seasickness medicine on the trip out because I wanted to see if I was susceptible to seasickness. The answer is yes. Once we got out there and into the water, though, it ceased to matter. The marine life we saw, even on the certification dives, was outstanding. Giant turtles, fish of all shapes and colors, we saw Nemo, some people even saw reef sharks. It was brilliant. It even made me forget that they were waking us up at 6 every morning. I did 2 dives on the first day, 4 dives on the second day, and 2 dives on the last day. They fed us constantly because your metabolism speeds up under the pressure of the water. I liked it so much I continued the open water cert and got my adventure diver certification, which included a night dive, a deep dive, and a photography dive. The night dive was creepy because it was hard to get your bearings and tell how deep you are without looking at your gauges. When you shined your flashlight on other people it looked like they were in outer space because everything around was black. The deep dive took me down to 26 meters where everything looks blue and green (you lose more of the color spectrum the deeper you go). I was hoping to suffer from nitrogen narcosis, which is a state that makes you feel high from your body not being able to get rid of excess nitrogen at depth below 20 meters, but unfortunately I was resistant. The photography dive was brilliant because I was able to get some really good shots of a stingray hiding under the sand and then swimming out to chase a fish.

We all got back on Friday and went out and partied on Friday night. It was a good mixed group and one of the girls was a local so she got us into some good clubs for free. The rest of the weekend was spent recovering as I got some kind of wicked chest cough from being underwater all week I guess. I also got some new ink... heh heh.

Well, I flew to Alice Springs on Monday and have been here a few days already. I'll save that for the next chapter since this has already been a way long e-mail. Hope everybody's doing great!

As always, the dude abides.
Dave

Greetings from Oz

2004-03-30T16:27:00.000-08:00

Hey everybody,

Pictures here:

Greetings from Oz

I think the last time I wrote I was in Queenstown. I'm now in Airlie Beach heading up the east coast of Queensland in Australia. Being surrounded by queens makes me feel at home I guess. For those of you who don't know about Queenstown in NZ, it is a town literally designed to suck the money from your wallet. It's renowned for all the adventure activites you can do (bungy, skydive, canyoning, sledging, parasail, jetboating, etc), it has tons of bars and restaurants, and it has a casino as well. Needless to say, I spent my share of cash there. The first day I got to Queenstown I was just wandering around checking out the place when who should I see walking down the street but Hollie and Jonny Red Roses from Fiji. The weirdness didn't stop there. After we went out drinking that night and I headed back to my hostel, I got in a conversation with an American guy who was staying there. Turns out his name is Lior, he used to work for C&W/Exodus, and he used to be the SE for Keynote (my old company). So we went back out for a couple of beers, and while we were out I ran into Ralf and Eelko the two Dutch guys from Nelson, who told me to come party with them on St. Patricks day.
So Queenstown turned out to be a total blast. I did two jumps from the canyon swing, the first one just straight out to get it overwith, but I liked it so much that I did another one. The second one (the one that's in the pictures) was done "gimp-style" where they hang you upside down and release you headfirst. The reason they call it that is because they take a stuffed animal that they've "altered" with electrical tape to make it look like the gimp from Pulp Fiction and they strap it to you while you jump. It was great. I could probably write another whole story about St. Patrick's day in Queenstown, but I'll try to keep it short. I met up with Ralf and Eelko at about 4 o'clock. From that point I can't really tell you in terms of hours or minutes how long we were out, just in terms of Guinnesses. We met up with William (a Brazilian guy we also knew from Nelson) and Helen, then we were also met by three Irish guys who were bunking with me at the hostel. I remember buying a lot of rounds. The two Dutch guys had never celebrated St. Patrick's day so they were surprised that so many Irish people were crawling out of the woodwork. I explained to them that it's cool to be Irish on St. Patrick's day. I also added that it's cool to be Italian *every* day. The next day I decided to clear my hangover and sweat out the toxins I'd climb up to the summit of Ben Lomond which is a mountain overlooking Queenstown. The peak was 1750 meters. About halfway up I thought I was going to cough up a lung, and that was before I hit the steep part. There were old women passing me by. I think it's because I didn't have one of those cool walking sticks. Anyway, once I finally reached the summit after about 3 hours of climbing, the views were spectacular. You could see clearly for 360 degrees, from Queenstown and the lake below, to the Remarkables, to some snow-capped mountains off in the distance. It was awesome. On the climb back down I had a falcon swoop down within 10 feet of me and perch itself on a rock. I tried to get close to take a picture but it flew away. The climb and the Nevis bungy were the higlights of my Queenstown stay, but they couldn't have been more different. The Nevis is a 440 foot bungy jump where you're falling for over 8 seconds. They make the heaviest guys go first, and I was tied with two other guys at 91 kg, which was weird since when they weighed me at the canyon swing I was 88. I guess I gained some weight on St. Patrick's. They drive you about 40 minutes out of town, and the last bit is up this narrow, winding road to get to the Nevis gondola. In retrospect, I think that drive was more dangerous than the jump itself. Anyway, they picked the four heaviest guys and winched us out to the gondola in the middle of this canyon. They asked who wanted to go first, and since no one answered, they picked guess who? So they made me sit in this weird dentist's chair with stirrups so they could strap me into the foot harnesses. I was making jokes asking them if they were obstetricians and whether it was a boy or a girl, but they didn't seem to think that was too funny. The rest of it you can see by the pictures at the link I mentioned above. They make you inch out onto this narrow ledge, then give you the quickest countdown in history before you have to throw yourself into the abyss. It was sooooo cool. I screamed like a little girl.
After Queenstown I headed to Christchurch, which wasn't all that exciting especially after Queenstown. I got my pictures put on a CD and sent them home so hopefully Ang will be able to put them up on my website soon. Honestly, I was disappointed. I don't think pictures could capture all the amazing things I've seen, so you'll have to take my word for it and use your imagination.
From Christchurch I flew to Sydney for my first glimpse of Australia. I met another guy on the bus ride into town who worked in the Antarctic research station, so I think I am destined to go. The hostel where I stayed was in King's Cross, which is the strip club ground zero of Sydney. There are also lots of "massage parlors." I spent a day doing the ubiquitous city walk, checking out the harbor bridge and Opera house and walking through the botanical gardens. The next day I headed to Bondi beach, where I was pleasantly surprised to find many hot girls, some of whom chose to sunbathe topless. Of course, as a sorbet to counter the effects of the topless ladies, there were many dudes wearing speedos. This one really burly guy was actually wearing a thong speedo.
He chose to place himself about 30 feet to my left, which essentially blocked that whole side of the beach from my view lest I get an eyeful of man ass. When I become president, my first official act will be to pass the Dave Bresci Speedo Bill where you can only wear speedos if you have a license. So you'll go to the DMV and in addition to a driver license and registration you can get your speedo license. Someone would check you out to make sure you're not too grotesque or wrinkly to be wearing a speedo and off you go. There'd be a three strikes law so if you get caught wearing a speedo without a license three times, you'd have to go to jail in your speedos. So then it would be a deterrent for other criminals as well...
would you want to be jailed with a bunch of old guys in speedos? I think not! So my platform would be no speedos, I'd legalize weed, and institute a monthly foam party on Air Force one. Vote for me in 2008! Where was I? Oh yeah, Bondi beach. I also took the ferry to check out Manly beach the next day, which I didn't like as much as Bondi, maybe because there was not as much toplessness. Heh.
From Sydney I flew to Brisbane where I stayed for a couple of days. I met up with Helen who showed me around the town (she lived there for 4 months) and was now back in Brisbane for a while. Brisbane really goes crazy on the weekends, especially around Brunswick street. It reminded me of some of those Girls Gone Wild videos of Bourbon street, minus the nudity. Just a load of people out in the street, bars blasting music, general chaos. It was great! I was also able to catch up with Anthony from Fiji who invited me to his house for dinner. We spent an enjoyable evening with his cousins throwing rocks at rats and possums in his backyard.

So that's the latest. Hope everyone is doing well!
As always, the dude abides.
Dave

Happy Anniversary

2004-03-14T16:24:00.000-08:00

Hi all,

Pictures here:

Happy Anniversary

Today is the one year anniversary of my unemployment. Woo hoo! In honor of this momentous event, I've decided to celebrate by... not working! Ha ha ha!!!

Last time I wrote I had just gotten to Nelson, which is where I ended up staying for about 4 days just lazing around the pool at the hostel and taking some walks around the area. I was lucky to have great weather for the time I was there. Nelson is kind of like Santa Cruz; it's near the water, has good weather, and has a bunch of little shops that sell arts and crafts, hippy stuff and organic shit. The hostel where I stayed has a bunch of lifers there. From how they tell it they've been there for months. These two Dutch guys Ralf and Eelko have spent two months picking fruit in the Nelson area. From what I can tell their day consists of picking fruit, hanging out in the hot tub, getting drunk, and waiting for the Kiwi Experience bus to drop off girls.

From Nelson I wanted to hit the Franz Josef glacier on the west coast. I'd read in the Lonely Planet guide about how the TranzAlpine train across the southern alps was one of the most beautiful rides in the world so I went out of my way to go to Christchurch first then take the TranzAlpine to Greymouth the next morning. That was a big disappointment. Maybe it's better in winter when there's snow but I've taken more scenic train rides in Europe. I was pretty pissed off that I spent extra time and money on this diversion when I could've stayed an extra day in Nelson by the pool.

Franz Josef is not really a town, it's more like a few hotels and some stores at the base of the glacier. I'd never seen a glacier before so I decided to sign up for an all day hike. I was considering doing a helihike where they bring you up the glacier by helicopter but the weather was really crappy so they didn't know if it was going to be available. For the hike they hook you up with boots, a rain jacket, an ice pick, and some steel talons to attach to your boots. I think my favorite view of the glacier was at the base where you can see how enormous it is. We spent about 6 hours on the glacier itself and it was pouring the whole time. Much climbing was involved, as you can imagine. It's not considered an extreme activity, but I managed to turn it into one by slipping headfirst into a crevasse. Somehow, the slippery snow nullified my cat-like reflexes. I think I had defective talons. Anyway, we're crossing over these crevasses when next thing I know I'm sliding down on my back headfirst. I must've used a combination of my left knee and my skull to stop my descent because that's what was sore afterward. It was about a 30 degree decline that went down about 25 feet so I don't think it was life-threatening. Still, I don't think it would've been too much fun. There were some pretty amazing things to be seen on the glacier, like the blueness of the ice and some of the natural caves that we slid and crawled through. Wicked!

From there I headed to Wanaka which is a small lakeside resort town. I stayed there a few days doing some day hikes and kayaking out in the lake. I met a guy from Marin who just spent 5 months working on a research station in Antarctica. I think I've found my next job! There's this cool little movie theater in Wanaka called Paradiso where they have couches and lounge chairs and serve fresh-baked cookies at intermission. I watched Return of the King (again). I think if Lord of the Rings took place in modern times they'd replace the ring with a cell phone. You know what I'm talking about, how people treat their cell phones. I'm going to text you later with... my precious! Anyway toward the end of the movie when they show a shot of Liv Tyler up on Minas Tirith someone had spliced in about 1 second of a porno. This naked woman was up there and gone in a flash. The whole theater started cracking up! It was just like in Fight Club! Awesome.

Speaking of Fight Club, it's true what Ed Norton says about single-serving friends. When you're travelling you end up meeting random people and just chatting with them for a couple of hours and you'll never see them again. Sometimes you don't even find out their names. Weird.

After Wanaka I headed to a small town called Te Anau from where I took a day kayak trip out to Milford Sound. It's in the middle of Fjordland which is named so because of... surprise... fjords! If you don't know what a fjord is, www.m-w.com. Again it was raining but the amount of gear they gave us covered everything but my hands and face. Which, of course, was enough for the sandflies to feed on. Those little fuckers bled me dry. They just swarm around you. Maori legend has they were created so people wouldn't linger too long in Milford Sound. I can see why because it was just spectacular. The mountains are almost perpendicular to the water and there's waterfalls streaking down just about everywhere. It rains two out of every three days in Fjordland which supplies a constant amount of freshwater on top of the salt water in the fjords. This creates a unique ecosystem where there are many species of plants and marine life growing in the sound that usually grow at much greater depths. I also saw a few seals swimming around. Toward the end of the day the sun came out so there were some amazing views. I think I'm getting jaded by the views in NZ. I've taken some good pictures though.

Well, I'm in Queenstown now I only have one week left in NZ. What else can I tell you... I stopped biting my fingernails... I miss my Les Paul (take good care of it Ron)... Swiss army knives are very useful... whitebait patties are good.

Take 'er easy!
Dave

Two Chubby Canadian Girls

2004-03-03T16:18:00.000-08:00

Pictures here:

Two Chubby Canadian girls

I think if I were to write a book about my trip that's what I would call it. They're everywhere and they seem to travel in pairs. Every hostel and every tour I've been on has included a pair of chubby Canadian girls. But I digress.

Last e-mail I said that I was about to go whitewater sledging. I am happy to say that thankfully I am still alive. You all know that I am prone to exaggeration, but seriously that was the most terrifying activity I've ever done. Worse than bungy, skydiving, motorcycle, or anything like that put together. I wasn't expecting it so it sneaked up on me. I should've known when we started putting our gear on and they gave us some kind of lacrosse helmet with a face shield. We spent half an hour in the river in the calm current just figuring out how to turn and how to turn over if we flip. The slegde is a plastic sled about 3 feet long with a handlebar on the inside. The golden rule is hold on no matter what.
So I wasn't taking it too seriously until the first rapid, which was class 3+. I've done river rafting before, so how hard could it be? Well, let me just describe it as a combination of sledding and drowning, with slamming into rocks is also involved. After the first rapid I wasn't sure whether I wanted to puke or crap my pants. Luckily, I was able to control myself and just wept uncontrollably. We had two more rapids, one of which was a class 4. Oh, by the way, says the guide, there's a waterfall on the right at the end of the class 4 which you want to avoid. The fun just keeps on coming! At the end of it all, rather than the sense of accomplishment that I had when I went skydiving, I just had a sense of relief that I wasn't dead.

I headed to Wellington next, which is a very cool city. It's full of cafes, bars, restaurants and clubs, and its city center is small and walkable. It's right on the water so just hanging out at the harbor on the waterfront is a cool way to chill. I spent a couple of days wandering around Te Papa, which is the national museum of New Zealand. It's fairly new and modern and is very interactive. There's heaps of exhibits on Maori culture and on the Treaty of Waitangi. Overall, I'd have to say it's the best museum I've ever toured.

I hooked up with this cat named Wairemu (Maori for William) on the bus ride on the way down to Wellington. Cool guy, but I wonder if he has ADD because he was constantly changing subjects. He's a chef who works at a restaurant called Fidel on Cuba Street, which is a sweet area in Wellington that has tons of little shops, restaurants, and cafes. Lloyd always said I was a communist so maybe I'm just drawn to it for that. Anyway, I managed to weasel a free dinner at his restaurant so I can't complain. There's supposedly a tattoo museum in Wellington that I went to look at, but it's just some guy's tattoo parlor with a bunch of pictures of freaky tattoos. I also checked out the Embassy Theater which is where each of the Lord of the Rings movies has had its world premiere. I saw Return of the King there... it's plush! They have assigned seating so I got a premium seat which is like a leather recliner in the middle of the theater. Plus you could get a beer in the theater. The only thing it's missing is... never mind. My mom's on this distribution list.

I finally got some good weather in Wellington, but when I was on the ferry crossing over to the South Island it turned to shit again so I couldn't see anything. I headed to Nelson where I stayed for a couple of days before heading out sea kayaking in Abel Tasman national park. It was a 3-day trip up the coastline of the park which was absolutely awesome! It's easy to see why it's the most popular walking park in New Zealand. The forest comes right out to the sea, and you get a really cool perspective from the water. I lucked out with the weather because I got two days of sun and one overcast day. The only rain we had was the first night which made it hard to get to sleep in the tent but otherwise it was all good. We paddled out to some of the small islands and had lunch and coffee on some tiny beaches. My guide was a dude named Leigh who does sea kayak trips in the summer and is a snowboarding instructor in the winter. His real passion is his rock band where he plays the drums. This guy's got the life! They're about to record an album and shoot a video so I told him if they ever tour in SF that they can crash at Ang's place. Ha ha!

Anyway, I'm back in Nelson now to chill out for a couple of days and save up some cash. Nelson is supposed to have the most days of sun in NZ so I'm keeping my fingers crossed. So far, so good. The hostel here has a pool and a hot tub, but they told me the pond would be good for me (come on... Caddyshack reference). I'm trying to eat as much venison as humanly possible while I'm down here. I'm also addicted to milk bottles, which are milk candies that are like those White Rabbits. Remember Woo when I ate that whole package over at your place and almost got sick?

As always, the dude abides.
Dave

This Weather Sucks...

2004-02-21T16:12:00.000-08:00

Pictures here

This Weather Sucks...

For those of you that haven't heard, there's some sort of crazy weather pattern going on in New Zealand that has caused storms and flooding mostly in the north island, which, of course, is where I am now. There's some kind of front from the west mixing with arctic winds or some shit like that. Hey, I'm not a meteorologist, I'm just a pissed off tourist who's getting rained on a lot. All I know is that my 4-day canoe trip on the Whanganui river got cancelled this morning which kind of put me on the irritable side.

Anyway, so far I've seen mostly cities in NZ. My first few days were spent in Auckland, which is much larger than I thought. 1.5 million people live there I think, which is about a third of New Zealand's population. I took a 10-mile walk across the city from one harbor to another which was nice. Auckland is built on top of 28 volcanoes so there were lots of hills, but I was able to get some good views and take some nice pictures. Some of the residential neighborhoods remind me of London, as do other things in Auckland, like a Starbucks and a kebab stand every half a block. Just as in London, I've almost been run over half a dozen times because I looked the wrong way crossing the street. There are a lot more sushi places, though, and a lot less Indian joints. Scott and James came back into town on Sunday and were kind enough to treat me to dinner in Mission bay. Things quickly turned sour though when I told them I wouldn't put out. Ha ha ha! (just kidding fellas)

Next, I headed to Hamilton which is NZ's largest inland city. I took a day trip out to check out a tour of Hobbiton from the Lord of the Rings movie.
The tour was very informative, but the set itself was pretty crappy. They've torn down most of the hobbit holes and can't restore them due to some legal stuff going on with New Line cinema. All you can see are cutouts of where the hobbit holes used to be and all the natural stuff that's still there like the lake and the party tree. Back in Hamilton Alex hooked me up with some of her friends from the time that she lived in NZ, which was great. I had dinner at Gay and Pete's house which is about 10 miles outside of Hamilton with an awesome 360 degree view of the countryside. Karyn was my chauffeur and also thankfully let me crash in her living room because I couldn't take another night at the YHA with the snoring, smelly Austrian dude who bunked above me.

From there I headed to Waitomo to check out the glowworm caves. I was scheduled to do a 5-hour caving trip which involved abseiling (which is lowering yourself by rope down into a cave), climbing, tubing, etc, but I was the only person who signed up for that trip that particular day so they cancelled it. I had to take the regular tubing trip, which was fun, but not the same. I learned a lot about glowworms, like the fact that they're not worms at all but fly larvae, which makes them really glow maggots. Also, the part of them that glows is their excrement. The tubing was really cool... definitely not for the claustrophobic. The glowing is actually a pale blue which makes it look almost artificial.

After Waitomo I headed to Rotorua which is a geothermal area that is also a center of Maori culture. It stinks like sulphur every once in a while, and it's nicknamed Roto-vegas because of all the tourists I guess. I can see where you could make that analogy because it's just like Vegas... minus the hookers, free booze, and casinos. I haven't seen any giant pyramids or replicas of Venice here yet, but I've only been here a few days. I have been to a replica Maori village courtesy of Tamaki tours which take you through a village and to a hangi (celebratory dinner) afterward. It was fun, but I think I was spoiled by my Fiji experience where I got to go to an actual village and saw firedancing and knifedancing and stuff like that. This was cool, but a bit touristy for me. I guess it also had to do with the fact that I was surrounded by old English people which kind of took away from the atmosphere. I think the combined age on the bus was about 100,000, but I would've had to cut the bus in half and count the rings to know for sure. So far, my favorite thing I've done in Rotorua is zorbing. What's that you ask? Well, it's where you get inside a giant inflatable ball, like a beach ball, and they roll you down a hill. You can either go straight down or do a zig zag course, and you can either do it dry or they throw in a bucket of warm water with you. I did a zig zag wet zorb, which was incredibly fun. It was like being in a washing machine. Awesome. I hope it comes to the US.

Anyway, I'm sure I've bored you enough. Since my canoeing trip got cancelled, I decided to stay an extra day in Rotorua and go whitewater sledging tomorrow. That's where they strap you onto some kind of boogie board with a helmet on and send you down a river. After that I'm heading to Wellington, then on to the south island.

Take it easy everybody,

Dave
Karate Expert
Cave Explorer
Zorbonaut

Greetings from Auckland

2004-02-11T16:10:00.000-08:00

Hi everybody,

Pictures are here

Greetings from Auckland

I just arrived in Auckland after a week in Fiji. For a place that I didn't plan on going, it was an awesome experience. The first day was not so great as there was a ton of turbulence on the overnight flight so I couldn't sleep. I went directly from Nadi to a tiny island called Beachcomber. It took me less than ten minutes to walk around the whole thing. The water and the beach were beautiful. I fell asleep on the beach face-down so I got this weird sunburn on the side of my face and like a 1x1 foot square on my back. It was really nice but I don't know how the nightlife was since I crashed out by 9.

Friday afternoon I headed back to Nadi to stay overnight as I was being picked up on the Feejee experience tour Saturday morning from there. On the boatride to Nadi I got my first taste of a wicked tropical rainstorm. Apparently, it's monsoon season. It's not so bad since the humidity and heat can be oppressive. Let's just say it was a moist week.

I'm usually suspicious of tours, but I'm glad I booked this one. On the first day, we went to the longest beach on the main island (Viti Levu) which was a beatiful stretch where the water was as warm as bathwater. We then went to a small village to meet the locals. A bunch of kids came out and greeted us and showed us around the village. It was brilliant... they couldn't have been more friendly. We then proceeded to the Sigatoka sand dunes where we rode down the face of the dunes with boogie boards. It started pouring as we were doing it which made it especially sweet.

The second day of the tour had us on a three hour hike into the rainforest on the southern part of the main island, followed by a tube ride down the river and a swim under a waterfall. Again, more rain. We spent the night in Suva which is the capital of Fiji. It's not the greatest city in the world, but we got our pictures in the Fiji Times the next day because our hostel had no water due to a burst water main. Must've been a slow news day. From there we headed to visit a school where we met some more of the local kids. Portions of the proceeds from Feejee Experience go to fund this particular school which was great to see because it didn't look like their facilities were particularly good. We then headed to another village for a sevusevu ceremony. That is a traditional Fijian welcome ceremony where everyone gathers around and drinks kava with the chief. I had been warned that kava tasted like shit but I didn't think it was so bad. I ended up having three or four of them since it's rude to say no. It made my tongue numb and I felt kind of stoned. Good times!

This night we headed to an island off the north coast called Nananu. We had the option of going on a boat or taking a sunset kayak to the island. I chose the kayak, of course. Unfortunately, I didn't realize that it was a double kayak and I got stuck with this skinny Frenchman behind me who'd never kayaked before. For every three times I paddled he'd do it once. I think I developed some sort of combination of carpal tunnel and tendinitis. The sunset kayak ended up turning into a 90-minute endurance nightmare, but it was a good way to work off some of the beers I'd been drinking.

My highlight of the next day, which was the last of the tour, was having goat curry at an Indian joint. They should've called it bone and gristle curry. It didn't taste like chicken. Anyway, I'd met some interesting people on the tour, a couple of whom want me to visit them in Australia. Anthony from Brisbane is pretty mellow, but Julian is a pastry chef from Sydney who apparently ran a guy down with his car on the sidewalk for sleeping with his ex-wife.

The guys who I hung out the most with, though, were Scott and James, two ex-professional rugby players from Auckland, also known as Poss and Fetus. I think I could probably write a book about these two guys. They're both about 6'1" and a good 260. Scott stopped playing because he's 32 and James because he was temporarily paralyzed by a neck injury. I don't know where to begin. They definitely can put away a shitload of beers. I learned a lot from these two Kiwis... like what "rooting a bird" means (use your imagination). We got along pretty well so they invited me to join them to leave the tour early and go to another small island called Robinson Crusoe island. This place was outstanding. It was definitely a party island, but the Fijian staff couldn't have been friendlier. Fijians apparently love rugby and Scott and James signed about 10 shirts and pants. Scott didn't want me to feel left out so he was telling everybody about how I was a karate expert and I get mobbed every time I go to Japan. Heh. I would spend about 2 hours writing about these guys' antics so I'll just save it for when I get back.

Last night on the island, the Fijians put on an amazing show which actually lasted about two hours. My camera battery died just as the show began so I won't have any pictures of it, unfortunately. These guys did traditional warrior dances, then they busted out the knife dancing and topped it off with a fire dance. It was awesome! They were totally getting into it with the screaming and the face painting. Most of them are pretty ripped so it must've been terrifying having to fight these guys hand-to-hand a couple hundred years ago.

The last thing I have to say about Fiji is that I encourage everybody who wants a tropical island experience to go there. It costs about 1/3 of what you would spend in Hawaii, and it's not as exploited. The Fijians are without a doubt the friendliest people I've ever encountered. It was almost freaky how nice they were. On the boat ride out this morning I got phone numbers from two guys who told me to come stay with them if I ever come back to Fiji.

Hope you're all doing well! I'll write again in a week or so.

Dave

Europe Summer 2003

2003-09-03T17:20:00.000-07:00

What can you say about Europe? It has a lot of old shit, and not everybody speaks English. That's pretty much all I've got. Okay, so I don't really have any stories from this one. I've got a few things on the captions but it's mostly about the pictures. So here goes...

Vienna and Cinque Terre