Sin Cities of Southeast Asia: Part 3

Day 6: Pattaya
Today is the busiest day yet for the tour, as we decide to partake in all the scheduled events, rather than going off on our own. We wake up at the butt crack of dawn (6:30am) to take a 20 minute speedboat ride to a small island. On the way, we stop by a floating barge where they have a parasailing area setup. Anny and Joe do it, Kiet and I did it last time, and Amanda wussed out. It's amusing that some of the workers are fully decked out in long pants and shirts, as well as ski masks.

We reach the island where the tour guides have a "reserved area" for us, right near the smoky and noisy boat landing. The price to rent a chair is 50, 100, and 200 baht, depending on the proximity to the water. Instead, we walk 50 yards down the beach and get our own chairs away from everyone else for 20 baht. What rebels we are.

The island is full of little shops selling all sorts of stuff, and tons of places to eat fresh seafood. We settle on steamed conch and oysters, as well as grilled prawns the size of my head. Eating fresh seafood on a nice beach is a pretty surreal experience. I recommend everyone try it someday.

After a couple hours, the group heads back to the mainland, and prepare to hit the road after lunch, stopping at four places. First stop is an orchid garden, where Amanda is quite impressed with the flora. I just think it has pretty colors.

Next is an elephant show. This is basically a circus act with about 15 elephants. They do various tricks like riding a tricycle, playing basketball, bowling, and soccer. They even paint a couple pictures and throw some darts. The best part of the whole trip was when we got a good shot of an elephant pissing. It was like a fire hose.

Then we headed off to see "Thai Alangkarn". The place seemed to pull some ideas from Disneyland, though not executed quite as well. At first I thought it was some sort of theme park revolving around Thai culture (like Disney's California Adventure). It turns out, there is only a single theater show. No rides or anything else of note. Damn, the show was long and drawn out. I fell asleep about 15 minutes in. Amanda tells me it was half decent.

The last show of the day is the best. It's the "Tiffany Show", a.k.a. ladyboy show. There are probably 30 ladyboys (trannies) performing different song and dance numbers. Fortunately, they all lip sync, because it would be odd to see a hot shim bust out a man voice. If you check out the pics, there are some of the hottest things I have seen. I try to avoid a Crying Game moment in my head.

We had back to the hotel of funk, and by this time Kiet & Anny are tired. They retire for the night, while Joe, Amanda, and myself head back to Walking Street. On the way, I was forced to hold a promise I made three years ago. I saw a bug cart, and the moment of truth was upon me. I had to eat a cricket. Admittedly the cricket smelled absolutely wonderful, and looked pretty good when sauteed with some onions. We bought a bag of crickets for about 50 cents, and also bought some bottled water to wash it down. After about 10 minutes of inspecting the critters closely (which probably didn't help any), we all took turns downing a cricket while taking lots of pictures. It didnt taste too bad, but the texture and the legs are just a little too much. I'm glad I finally ate one, and I'm glad I don't plan to go back to Thailand again.

Great Firewall of China

It must extend into Vietnam. Because as soon as I posted about the sex shows in Pattaya, I could no longer access my blog. Thinking it was a rogue internet cafe with an overzealous firewall, I tried another cafe. Though if you think about it, the likelihood of the internet cafe monkeys even knowing how to setup ZoneAlarm is so low, that it must be a government thing.

Sure enough, I've been denied access to my blog throughout Vietnam.

So I've had to resort to the magic that is port 3389 on my home PC. By the time I come back to the States, I'll probably have a WoW gold farming operation running on my home computer. But I'm keeping my fingers crossed for some sort of botnet attack. At least I can say my computer was part of something greater.

Sin Cities of Southeast Asia: Part 2

Day 5: Pattaya
On our way from Bangkok to Pattaya, we stop by a diamond center. The tour starts off with a cheesy video which is in Vietnamese, so I just look at the pretty rocks on the screen. Then we head to the showroom, which is like Zales on crack. The best part are the dozens of sales ladies who pick their mark as soon as they enter the room. Amanda and I had a lady tailing us the whole time we were there, eager to sell us some cheap diamonds help us with any questions we may have. Amanda, of her own free will and accord, did not purchase anything.

Back on the road, it takes 2 hours to reach Pattaya. We check into the second worst hotel I have ever seen (the first being in Saigon from 2004). The foul odor from the hallway luckily did not extend into the room, though the dingy carpet did. Amanda and I would end up sleeping like a 60's sitcom couple: in two twin beds.

After dinner we all had a choice of which "sex shows" we wanted to visit. There was a selection of four different shows, and you could see any or all of them. Amanda and I both decided to watch just one show, since I had seen this stuff before, and she didn't really need 4 hours worth of freakiness. My friends took the three show package.

The show itself was run-of-the-mill Thai sex show. It had the usual pulling of razor blades out the vag, inserting and ejecting live goldfish from the vag, playing horns with the vag, writing notes with the vag...As a matter of fact, everything involved the vag. The highlight of the show for me (as it was last time) was the live hummingbird on a string. Man, that thing looks pissed.

When my friends left to go to the other shows, Amanda and I hit the local night market, then called it a night. When my friends came back, they convinced me to head out to Walking Street, which is the essence of Pattaya. This is where all the beer bars, go-go bars, hookers, and tourists are concentrated. I tried to take as many pictures as I could of old white men and young Thai hookers. It's tough to take night shots with a point-and-shoot, but I got some good results.

Sin Cities of Southeast Asia: Part 1

Day 3: Bangkok
Today we leave Saigon for Thailand. We met the rest of our tour group for the first time. Sure enough, it's filled with old Vietnamese people. There is one other rather young couple, but they are local to Vietnam, so we don't speak to them much.

It's a 1 hour flight to Thailand, so we barely finished our snack by the time we land. We all pile onto the charter bus, which thankfully has A/C. You've never seen a place filled with so many tour buses; there are more here than Orlando.

On the way to Bangkok, we stop by an awesome crocodile farm. Actually, it looks like it once was an awesome farm, and now it's deserted save for the occasional tour group. I took tons of pictures and movies, hoping I'd get lucky with a shot of the trainer getting his arm/head bitten off. No Luck.

We reach Bangkok and check into our hotel, which is above average. After dinner, we cross the street and enter one of the thousands of massage parlors. No, we did not get a happy ending. Just a regular oil massage. I swear the women here have hands of steel. I got bruises on my legs from the rubdown. And this wasn't even one of the famous Thai massages, which really hurt like hell.

Day 4: Bangkok
First on the day's itinerary was a trip to the Grand Palace and adjacent Emerald Wat. It's quite a spread, with lots of shiny stuff. That's pretty much it. The rest of the day, we were supposed to go to a "spy show" (think Indiana Jones at MGM studios, but way more lame) and a "dolphin show" (again, think Sea World divided by 1000). Since Kiet and I have suffered through these shows on our last trip in 2004, we spared everyone else in our group the same torture.

Instead, we bailed out of the group, and walked to a local market near one of the main canals. We took a 90 minute boat tour of a bunch of back canals, taking in the local lifestyle. Thailand, though rather poor, still has its beautiful moments. When we landed, we ate lunch at the market, then took a tuk-tuk back to the hotel. Navigating the busy streets of Bangkok in a three-wheeled motor vehicle is almost as crazy as mopeds in Saigon, though not quite.

By then, the group was back from their shows (they were all amazed at the pyrotechnics), and were getting ready for dinner. We stayed separate from the group, ate on our own, and headed off to what would be a highlight of the trip: a Muay Thai fight in Lumphini Stadium.

We bought ringside tickets for 2000 baht (about $60 USD). Apparently, it's damn near impossible to buy non-ringside tickets from anyone. They say it's "safer" for you in the VIP section, though we all know it's because we're foreign and we're big ballers. We get there, and our seats were pretty good. We were in the last row of the ringside section, which is only about 8 rows back. There were 7 matches that night and a few of them were pretty badass. Final tally: two knockouts, five decisions, no muggings.

After the fight, we head to a nearby night market, grab some grub, and head home. Tomorrow, we hit the road to Pattaya.

Welcome To The Jungle

Day 1: Saigon
So the 26 hour trip is finally done, and we are in the midst of our first full day in Saigon. We are staying at Anny's Aunt's house in the city. Her family owns a little used moped shop, and the house is in the back of the shop. They reserved two bedrooms for us, with one having an A/C unit. All of us slept in that room.

Day 2: Saigon on mopeds
We start the day off in tradition Vietnamese style: with an iced coffee. I plan on having at least 4 of these suckers a day every day that I am in Vietnam. Anything less would be a sin. After a hearty breakfast of pho, we paid four guys $10 each to chauffeur us around the city for the day on their modeds (her uncle was #5). Mopeds are a lot easier than trying to find a cab for the 5 of us. Plus it's a hell of a lot more fun to ride around in. If you don't know what the traffic is like over here, you'll have to check out the pics and movies as soon as I can get them posted. Traffic lights and road markings are more of a suggested guideline than the rule. You go where you can, when you can. There is also no such thing as jaywalking, so you gotta be on your toes. Spending the day on the mopeds was one of the best parts of the trip thus far, and it's only Day one.

We checked out two of the big markets in Siagon. I eyeball a couple of cobra wine bottles, though I haven't seen the mouse fetus yet. I know it's out there somewhere, and I plan on bringing some back as souvenirs.

The local food was delicious, though nothing too exotic for me yet (no dog, cat or horse meat yet). I haven't dared to drink the water, though I did have several drinks with ice in it. So far, the intestines are holding up well. I will keep you posted on that storyline, as I know you are all interested.