Ode to an ugly shoe

Thank you, thank you ugly shoe.

For propping the door open.

If you were not there, the door would close.

And lock.

Forcing me to go the long way.

Aesthetics are not your forte but you serve a higher purpose.

Thank you, ugly shoe.

Things I haven't done in a while:

-Eaten a Veggie Burrito

-Surf

-Skateboard

-Hug My Mom

-Play with Schwoops

-Drink cheap American Beer

-Blaze it

-Gone to a party

-Watch TV

-Slay multiple annas.

-Drive a vehicle

Hella Gucci

God probably lives in Kuala Lumpur. Not too many places can claim that but after visiting KL for the first time, I'm a believer. The lineup was Martin, Magnus, Sauvik, Ze German and myself. To be honest, i was already predisposed to dislike Ze German. We had the magic number of travel before he joined and he didn't really add anything to the mix except lag time. We left late Friday afternoon with cash in our pockets, no plans and the open road ahead of us.

Crossing into Malaysia is like crossing into any poor country. A turnstile. 

The moment you breathe in the air, your stomach churns.  Exhaust burned my nasal passages as an infinite number of  motorcycles whizzed by on the bridge to Johor Bahru.  The smell of inadequate septic systems fills the air with that familiar sickening taste in your throat. Upon arrival in JB, we met at guy who worked for the MRT and he helped us catch a ride to the bus station. An hour later, we're sitting on a curb playing with stray cats waiting to board a bus to KL. Lag, lag and lag some more.

Sleeping on a bus is the worst.

Arriving in a foreign country at 3 AM with no plan or booked room isn't the best situation to be in. Especially when you just nodded in and out of consciousness for 5 hours and upon waking you wonder where you are. We head toward some open shops and try to assess our situation. I stop to gather my thoughts but can't think clearly because the only thing i hear is "Hey! Need a taxi?" An old man approaches us and out of repetition, we shy him away. He makes a circle around us and offers us a hostel room for the night at 12 ringgit each. About $4.

Thirty minutes later, the old man comes up to our room and tells us that a bunch of pretty girls are in the lobby. I smile. The girls are from the UK and one decides to stay up and hang out with us. I egg her on as she pokes fun at American words like elevator and trunk.

"It's a lift! And not a sidewalk. It called the pavement. And why is it a trunk? It's the boot!"

My motivational force for visiting Kuala Lumpur was to buy some gear. Or "Hella Gucci" as the Swedes put it. Petaling Street was the spot and haggling was the game. These guys working the market are professional hagglers but once you figure them out, it becomes a sport. The best part about these guys was that they knew when to stop and take NO for an answer. Unlike Bangkok. They had all the essential goods that make a good counterfeit market. Sunglasses, watches, luggage, t-shirts, bootleg DVDs, purses and every useless Kuala Lumpur souvenier you could fathom. The key to the game is to name your price and stick to your guns.

Later on in the evening, we went drunk cruising through the market trying to get high fives from every vendor. This guy came up to Magnus trying to sell him bootleg pornos. I approached him and asked for gay porn. To my surprise, he had some and we high fived as i exclaimed "Yeah!! Gay pornos!!" His face immediately wore a frown as i walked away and laughed.

Getting caught outside during a rain storm was quite an experience. Huge puddles gather in the streets as the winds shift back and forth. Magnus and i huddle toghter with some other guys against the bridge support as the wind whips around and our clothes absorb the moisture in the air. We decide to make a run for it an duck into an indian cafe for some tea while we watch the rain. I always think of listening to Feist on a rainy day. Thanks Charles.

After the rain subsided and we wandered a bit.



Imagine your grandpa.
Now add 15 years and make him asian, if he's not already.
He's wearing women's jeans.
And has a low cut shirt and small boobs.
He's dancing.
Alone.
On the busiest street corner in Chinatown.
Everyone is gawking.
..................
And he doesn't give a fuck.



By now, i'm kicking myself for not bringing my camera. What a spectacle.

I'll try to find God's house next time.

Singapore National Day

12:30 PM - My eyes open and blurry vision streams into my brain as i peer up at the ceiling.  I'm wondering how I got home last night.  Oh yeah, i jumped in a cab with Carolina and some other Swedish annas after McDonalds.  I saunter over to my desk and open up my laptop.  Am i missing anything?Where's my wallet? Where's my phone? Shit.  How much did i spend last night?

Log onto facebook and see if anyone wrote me anything.  My phone rings.  It's Dakota and he wants to grab some lunch.  I head down and the whole gang is there looking like they fell off a train in the middle of the night.  Head down to the 

canteen and grab some fruit and coffee.  Today is going to be a great day.  After exchanging stories about last night and having a few laughs, we decide that going downtown for National Day will be a good idea.  Next came the fun part.

We board the bus and Max calls us up.  We agree to meet him at the Boon Lay train station.  Next thing, everyone but Dakota and i are having McDonalds.  We get bored and start wandering the mall.  Finally after 20 minutes, we get everyone outside.  Maggie and Max need to hit the ATM.  After a while, i head over to see what's taking them.  There's a guy who's staring blankly at the machine scratching his head, about 6 people behind him and then Maggie and Max.

  After losing four pounds in water weight, Max tells us that he needs to put money on his ez-link pass.  Max, Dakota and i wait in another line while the gang is fucking around in the station.  This entire section of the story took about an hour or so.  Finally we board the train and pack in like sardines.  We get there and everyone is already getting over it.  We walk outside and follow the crowds.  Everyone who lives on the island is out and about near City Hall.  Hordes of short dark people crowd the streets and flow through like water.  We hit a roadblock when there's a ticket checkpoint. Tickets? What tickets?  For what?  We talked to some people and they told us that we could watch the show for free over by the bridge.  I look up and dark grey clouds line the horizon.  

Fuck.

I don't have anything to put my camera in if it starts raining.  

So we're standing on this bridge with tons of people on it and we can't see a thing.  Awesome.

"Where's Max?" i ponder out loud.

"Oh, he dipped out like ten minutes ago.  I guess he got over it."  said Dakota

Hmmm Typical

I glance up again and i get this really bad feeling that it's going to pour.  I yell to the others that i'm going back inside the building nearby.  Henrik decides that he wants to go too.  That was the last time that i saw the whole group.  

We hang out for a bit and i try to use the restroom but some lady starts yelling at me in Singlish.  I shrug my shoulders and smile.  Henrick spots a good place to go outside and see the show.  

Let me say one thing about Asia in general.

Lines do not exist.  You just push your way to the front of anything.  7-11, getting train seats, trying to get a urinal in the restroom, getting drinks at the bar, going up an escalator.  At first, i would get really upset when people would push me but now it's an olympic sport.

I PUSH my way through the crowd and next thing is Henrik and i standing around some stage with a bunch of stuff wrapped up in tarps and nothing happening for at least a half hour.  I start snapping away at random people and

 Henrik laughs because of my forwardness with photography.  It starts to rain a bit, so i'm between taking pictures and keeping my camera under my shirt.  People push and we push back.  A couple of helicopters fly by, the people cheer and then nothing happens.  We're both pretty bummed that we spent a half hour standing our ground against a bunch of dirty Singaporean guys so we could have exactly 45 seconds of "fun".  We cruise down a ways and end up under a bunch of trees and i'm talking with another photographer about cameras.  Everyone around me was really interested in my camera because i had found a bag and wrapped it up in it.  I poked a hole for the viewfinder and let the lens stick out.  I kept telling people that it was an underwater housing for deep sea photography.  i think that some people actually believed me.  We get bored here and head back.  There's so many people around that i'm literally swimming through the crowd.   We hole up in a spot and meet some annas (excuse me, girls) from NUS and start chatting away.  They start telling us how their school is better.  Immediately, they lose points cause they were being serious.  The fireworks start going off and i keep bumping into some guy while taking pictures and he keeps turning around and looking at me in disgust.  I smile to myself and chuckle a bit.  Fun's over.

This crowd, this living breathing entity started to get wild.  First, people began to boo when people started to leave right after the show.  Henrick looks at me and makes that face that says "we should leave."  People didn't go crazy or riot or anything like that.  But when you have that many people trying to get somewhere at one time, things start to get out of hand.  Luckily, there's police presence to keep things in order.  We started to head through a corridor when it backed up and people began to flood out into the parking garage through a small door.  We head out and start walking up some ramp to the street.  After we hit the top, i look left and see a bunch of people standing behind a barricade with a cop standing there holding them back.  This large group that we're a part of is walking in the middle of an empty street that was previously closed down.  People start shuffling together as we reach the MRT station.  We're standing shoulder to shoulder and this is when the pushing match really began.  We decide to hang tight and grab some food before heading home to avoid the crowded trains.  We go down a huge escalator, turn around and head up to go around a barricade and enter the mall.  We head straight for the food court and start looking for a table with trays in hand. We spot two seats near a couple and cruise over.  Just as we get there, some guy walks up and asks the couple if they could sit there.  Henrik and i look at each other and plop down at the table, ignoring the other guy.  He grimaces and i mutter "that's right, bitch"  in my most macho murmur available.  We smile at each other and enjoy our cold food.  There is no such thing as heat lamps in Singapore.  Any food that you get where you point and build a plate will be cold.  No exceptions.  

After food, we wander the mall 

and spot a crazy fountain that makes 

shapes and such with flowing water.  I tried to capture the word "Singapore" but it didn't come out quite as i wanted.

 

After the madness had settled down, we jumped on the train and caught the bus back to campus.  My feet hurt. 

Time for bed. 

P.S. In your face Dakota.  My day was better than yours. 

Bangkok and Koh Samed

Real spit......Bangkok is dirty. There are dying dogs laying all over, street vendors selling food you have never heard of, traffic that makes LA look pleasant, pollution you can taste and the most aggressive salesmen on the planet.  Oh yeah, and more dying dogs.

We holed up in a sketchy little spot near Khao San, which is the tourist trap of tourist traps.  The entire street is lined with people trying to sell counterfeit goods and useless "Thailand" crap.  Every step you take, another guy is walking up to you trying to fit you for a suit or to get you to buy some t-shirt.  They will always ask "where you from?" and try to sweet talk you into opening your wallet for them.

The people of Bangkok can be categorized by their trade.  There are the Arabs who hang out in front of tailor shops and try to get you to "just come in and take a look".  There are the annoying Burmese women who wear all sorts products and carry a trunk full of gifts.  They all have these wooden frogs that make a croaking sound when you rub a stick on the back of them.  They persistently come up to people dining on the street and push their products on them over and over in a futile attempt to make 100 baht.  I thought that these women were so amusing in their annoying-ness,

that i began to test their boiling points.   First I tried to sell them my passport and barter with cigarettes.  Next i would try to hug them

 and they would just stand there wearing a disgusted look.  Needless to say, they were my favorite street people.  

(See enclosed drawing done by me.)

Next are old blind people.  You can find them roaming the streets in pairs singing karaoke into cheap electronics collecting donations as they shuffle down the street.  They 

walk ridiculously slow and just sing their heart out to over dubbed Backstreet Boys tracks.  The best part is that they look like they just woke up in a tomb after 10 years of torture.

Then there are the Tuk-Tuk drivers who will swindle you at any chance they get. They offer cheap transportation around the city and will wait for you at temples while you look around.  The catch is that in between taking you to places that you want to go, they take you to places that they want to go.  There a a dozen shops in town which give gas coupons to Tuk-Tuk drivers if they bring tourists to their overpriced shops.  In a single trip, we went to four temples and  five shops that he made us go to, then our driver dumped us off at MBK, which is basically an organized Khao San in a single building.  

In MBK, you will find a startling number of electronic stores and gift shops that would make even the most experienced shopper want to go home.  There is constant chatter and yelling emitting from every shop and glass cases line their borders full of digital cameras, ipods, cell phones all out of box wrapped in cellophane.  These professional hagglers will coax you into "just looking" while they stand there and pressure you into a purchase.  

A couple of days in Bangkok is all anyone needs.

Let me tell you about the king of thailand.  HE IS GOD.  In all seriousness, the people of thailand worship the king. Apparently, he's done all sorts of philanthropic acts for the country for as long as anyone can remember.  They like him so much that:

-There are pictures of him in every household and every shop at the highest point possible.

-There are pictures of him at every major intersection with gold bridges.

-The only way to get in trouble in thailand without being a complete fuckhead is to   badmouth the king.

-They play the national anthem to a montage of photos of the king before every movie showing.

-He was born on a Monday and every Monday you can

  see hordes of people wearing the king's color on his day. (Yellow)

So after we spent a few days in Bangkok,  Dakota finally got a hold of his buddy who had spent 8 months on internship there.  We met up with him and his thai girlfriend at a McDonald's in Khao San.  That night he took us to Pat Pong market, which is the home of the fabled "Ping Pong show."  As soon as we got there, we were bombarded by even more aggressive guys trying to get us to see the show.  I had wanted to see the show for the sake of having done it but with a 500 baht price tag, it didn't seem worth it anymore.  Finally after chasing us 20 meters, we all agreed that we would "take a look" and stay if we liked it.  

We sauntered up the stairs with the guy pushing us along trying to get us to be less adamant about the situation.  We hit the top and i looked left.  Through the clouds of cigarette smoke and blacklights, i saw a group of women standing bottomless on a stage.  There was one woman laying on her back with her knees bent and a cigarette in hand.  With my own eyes, i witnessed her put the cigarette to her vagina, draw smoke and exhale a cloud of dirty tobacco smoke that dissipated into the air.  Right then and there i decided that i had seen enough.  I tried to turn around to leave but a scantily dressed prostitute took my hand and patted a seat hoping that i would join her.  Immediately my fight or flight sensor went off.  I chose flight.  

The next day, Dakota and I jumped into a cab and gave him the directions to Steve's place which was off of Thong Lor or the "Beverly Hills of Bangkok." 

 Our driver immediately began to entertain us by driver exceptionally crazy and making animal noises at every girl we passed.

  I whipped out my camera and started to shoot the city as we rode through.  He got excited and told me to take a picture of him and make him famous.......So here it is.

After we hit Steve's and dropped off everything we didn't need, we headed to the bus station.  Four hours, two restroom breaks 

and a bus ride that stopped every kilometer we were dropped off in a sleepy port town that smelled of dead

animals and exhaust.  We jumped on a ferry and headed to the island.  This place was the most beautiful place i have ever been to.  Perfect sand, $6 massages, cheap booze and food everywhere.  The only thing that would make this place heaven was surf. 

 

The sand is so fine grained that it 

would squeak as you walked through. 

At this point our crew consisted of 

Steve, Ida, Mike, Dakota and myself.  

It was perfect because Steve knew the 

land, Ida knew the language and Mike

provided the entertainment. Before 

we headed out to grab dinner the first

night, Steve told us he had a surprise. 

We followed him into his room and 

he fumbled around until he took out 

a huge bag of what looked like 

dead plants and dirt.  

"What the fuck is that?" i asked.

"It's weed."

"Really?"

"It's a different strain of weed. I guarantee that you have never smoked this kind before. Your

body's not used to it."

"Huh"

"Yeah, it doesn't smell or taste like weed but this shit WILL get you high."

.................

And it did.

While we sat in lounge chairs, beers in hand watching the sun set. A girl walked by and we all 

followed her turning our heads in unison.

"Holy shit!" said Mike. 

"We're in a Corona commercial!"

and we all laughed.

We spent the next couple of days eating and drinking in abundance while our wallets slowly 

became flatter and flatter. Right before we got on the bus, we decided that the ride home 

would be more interesting if we inhaled smoke prior to boarding. I spent the next couple of 

hours sitting and wondering why the guy next to me kept trying to sleep on me. I woke him 

up and offered him some cheese crackers to eat. We got back to Steve's place grabbed our 

luggage and headed to a place called "Big John's Hostel". This place was the hooptiest place 

i had ever been to. As he handed us the room key, Big John told us that a girl staying there 

just had her laptop and camera stolen. He smiled as we walked out the door. Communal 

showers and cockroaches crawling, we found our room and settled a bit. The entire floor felt 

strange like something was slightly off. It was only when i realized that the whole floor was 

slanted. Instead of making proper drains for the showers, they built the floor on an angle so 

water would run into one corner solving their problem. Obviously the best solution. Few 

more days in the rotten city and we jumped in a cab and waved goodbye to the street people of

Bangkok. Until we meet again!