Messages from abroad, not massages from a broad

So we’ve ended up in Cambodia and we’ve been here a couple of nights already.  We hired a driver, named Marom, for 3 days and he has been pretty reliable for us thus far.  The last two days we’ve requested for him to show up at various times and he always shows up on time.  Even when we’re late, he patiently waits with a smile.  Tomorrow, he’s supposed to pick up Darren and Becky at 430am so that they can drive out to the mountain to view the sunrise.  I would probably go but I don’t feel like spending $20 USD to see the sun rise.  I’m sure it’s breathtaking and/or beautiful, but I’ll just watch in Vancouver when I get back and pretend I’m in Siem Reap.

On our first night here, we told our driver that we wanted to eat local food so he drove us to some local restaurant that had a few stray cats and a lot of bugs.  The cleanliness of the food was a tad suspect, but I figured that there was a reason why I brought diahhrea medication with me, so we took a chance and had a good meal.  It turns out that the food was fine and for me at least, it didn’t upset my stomach too badly.    I think everyone else was OK too.  If there were any problems, I attributed it to the Maladrone medication we were on to combat Malaria.  Anyway, we called all the bugs that joined us for dinner, ‘buddies’.  I think Terry got the first buddy.  He found it swimming in his orange Fanta.  There were lots of other random bugs in landing in our food and although there were quite a few, they were tiny and it didn’t bother us too much. The most disturbing one was
in our morning glory veggie plate.  There was a live worm in our dish.  Yummers!

The next day, we had hired a local guide to take us to the temple ruins.  HIs name was Kahm and his knowledge of English was great, but his pronunciation sucked (picture Terry as a guide.. :)  I kid I kid..).  Anyway, Kahm was super nice and he really new the history of the temples that we went to as well as the stories and fables of all of the sculptures and etched murals on the walls.  I learned a lot about the different religions and the Gods that the people went through in the 12th Century.  The temples were amazing and I actually think that Bayon temple, was more impressive and interesting than the tourist favourite, Ankor Wat.  Ankor Wat was bigger but way more boring and there were fewer statues and towers to enjoy.  It was a gruelling day as we spent hours in about 35 degree temperatures.  It was draining and by the end of the day I was tired and grumpy.  Our guide was noticably hot and sweaty too as his stench started to permiate through his clothes half way through the day.   At the last leg of the tour most of us had stopped listening to him cause he was either too detailed (read, long winded) and/or too stinky to get near.  At least for me it was a little too unbearable.  Poor Lisa was miserable from the heat.  I don’t think you could be more disinterested in the place.

The next day (which was earlier today), everyone was templed out except for Darren, Becky and I.  So we got up at 7am again for breakfast and we headed out at 830 with Kahm again.  He was wearing a clean shirt so he didn’t stink.  Excellent!  We headed out to the temple where they filmed scenes for Anglina Jolie’s Tomb Raider, Ta Prohm.  On our way to the tmeple I was sleeping in the car and suddenly our driver slammed on the breaks and veered a little bit.  I woke up to find out that we were inches away from smoking a cow that had darted out in front of our van.  Pretty funny cause the cow was really close to the vehicle and I wonder if he/she knew how close it was to meeting it’s maker.  The cow actually looked scared as it ran back to the side of the road.  I could have sworn it was looking at us as with fear on it’s face.  It would have been a good story to tell if we had killed a cow or if the cow totalled our van.  It’s hard to say what would have happened though because we weren’t going particularily fast.  Our driver only drives about 20 km/hr due to the shitty roads.

We saw one more temple and it was more of the same.  I’m all templed out at this point and I don’t think I’ll be looking at any more temple ruins for a long time.  At least not in Cambodia.  For lunch, we went to some place called Red Piano.  It was one of Anglina’s hangouts when she was filming Tomb Raider.  They had the Tomb Raider poster hanging on the wall, as well as a few pictures of Mrs Brad Pitt, including an autographed photo.  I wanted to steal the autographed photo cause her trading card autograph goes for hundreds.  After lunch, we walked around a bit and there wasn’t anything of interest in the neighbourhood so we headed back to the hotel to chill out.  And that’s where I’ve been the last few hours.  I took a nap, a shower, and now I’m hanging out in PussyT’’s (aka JimmyT aka James’) room while the girls play cards and da boys take turns on the notebooks.

So that’s it.  I’ll try to update again before I head home.  Damnnit, this trip is almost over!!!   UGH.  The horror!  I don’t wanna go  home.  Cya soon and go Canucks!

~Anthony

For the most part, people in Bangkok are fairly nice.  I love how most people greet here by bringing their hands together, palm to palm, under their chin and bow with "sawahdee kaa" (or khrap for men).  I think it is such a beautiful greeting that I may adopt it when I return to North America. It exudes respect and grace.  Even the Ronald McDonald statues at the McDonald’s restaurants in Thailand are in the greeting pose.  It’s awesome!

So up until now, I’ve had little problems with food and my stomach’s been able to take care of anything that I’ve consumed. But there must be something about the food here because my stomach never seems to feel 100%, or even 90% for that matter.  I attribute this to a menagerie of factors:

• too much orange Fanta
• the food is too spicy
• drinking too many young coconuts
• dirty food

I think it’s probably a mixture of the first three because I think if it was the street food, I’d probably be a lot more sick.

Anyway, last night, we went to MBK for some shopping.  It’s a big mall with lots of vendors and stores and it’s basically a mix of fake and real stuff.  It’s also roughly divided by the type of products that are sold.  So cell phone items are grouped together on one floor and in one concentrated area.  Furniture is on another floor.  Fake shit is on another, and so on.  It’s gotten to the point now where I am kinda sick and tired of looking at this stuff cause I cannot buy anything anymore.  It’s either because I can’t fit anything here or because I can’t afford to buy stuff anymore cause I’m dangerously close to the luggage weight limit.  I was hoping to stash some stuff into Henry’s luggage, but he went gangbusters on the home items like pillows, pillow cases, coasters, placemats, and closet organizers.  The stuff is awfully nice and cheap here and it kinda pains me when I cannot buy any of it.  Items that are $2-3 here would probably cost $10-20 back in North America.  It sucks!  So, if any of you plan on coming here in the next few months, let me know and perhaps you can bring back some stuff for me.  My tip to you is don’t pack a full luggage and leave plenty of extra space for new stuff.

Last night, we went to Padpong.  It’s basically the redlight district of Bangkok.  This is where you can go into an establishment to watch the girls do weird things.  Padpong is basically a street full of bars and street vendors.  It is totally sketchy and it feels unsafe and lewd.  Inside the bars, they have girls dancing on stage and they stop every once in a while to show the world what freaks they really are.  For example, they can shoot darts out of their twats and burst balloons, of they can empty a bottle of beer into their cooch and fill the bottle back up.  So you get the idea.  They do screwed up ‘talented’ things and are basically freak shows for foreigners.  It’s kinda amazing to watch, and on the other hand, it’s very degrading too.  Anyway, we were led into one place called, I joke you not, Super Pussy.  What a classy place.  We ordered a beer each and the sketchy beers came to us semi-warm.  I wonder if they re-used the liquid that the girls used in their show (see above).  If so, I nicknamed it ‘funnel beer’.  I sure hope it was not funnel beer that we were drinking cause that would be more than nasty.  Anyway, we sat down and saw a couple of the girl’s tricks when some boss lady told us that we had to pay an additional 300 baht (about $9 Cdn) to watch the show.  Originally, we were informed that there was no cover and that all we had to do was order a beer.  So we thought they were trying to extort money from us and we left the bar abruptly.  For a second, I thought we were going to rumble in the bar and I thought I would have to start throwing aside bouncers.  I’m glad it didn’t get to that point and I’m even more glad that they didn’t follow us downstairs.  Later on, we found out that the $300 baht was normal procedure.  Hahaha!  Oh well.  I think I saw enough anyway.  I’m most disappointed that I never saw the darts or pingpong show, but I guess I’ll have to be content that I even went in.

Earlier today, we went to yet another outdoor market.  I think I’m the only one that came out of that place empty handed.  It was pretty sketchy there too.  The place was dirty and filled with hundreds of store stalls.  I believe the temperature was about 38 degrees at the outdoor market.  It wasn’t too bad a place, but it wasn’t fantastic either.  We headed back and shortly after a few afternoon cocktails (happy hour), we went to dinner.  I had a dinner buffet that had everything.  It was the priciest meal I had this past 3 weeks and was the equivalent of about $36 Cdn.  Oh well, it was worth it.  The salmon was awesome.

Ack.  I’m so tired and I’m barely able to stay awake to keep going.  I slept so much in all of our cab rides today too.  Bugger!  Overall, I think the city of Bangkok is beautiful.  It’s more or less developed into a nice big city, but the commute and travel of it is a huge turnoff and I’m sure that some stores lose a lot of business because most of the places are difficult to get to.  It doesn’t help that the cabbies suck ass too. 

ZZZZzzzzzzzzzz I’m heading to bed because I’m dying here.  I can barely think or function properly anymore.  So with that said, good night.

Anthony

Koh Samui came and went and I have to say it was very similar to that of Boracay except food seemed a little cheaper and the beaches weren’t as nice.  The other golden nugget of joy at Samui was the topless sunbathers.  We read somewhere that it was considered rude to be topless at the beaches, but honestly, I didn’t feel overly offended by all of their actions.  I doubt many people (men) were disappointed in the exposed mammaries either.  All I’ve got to say is, if you’ve got it, flaunt it.

We didn’t do a whole lot at Koh Samui.  I believe I had a total of three massages there and they were all worth it.  The best one was at Eranda spa and although it cost a little (actually a lot) more than the other ones, it was the best experience.  For a paltry $100 Cdn, we got to experience 2.5 hours of relaxation and pampering.  I think this trip has been nothing but the food and the massages.  We were actually at the spa for 4 hours, and the treatment included the following: steam room, jacuzzi, body wrap (or body scrub), massage, and facial.  Surprisingly, the steam room was quite enjoyable even though they were pumping in steam at a temperature of 45 degrees.  The jacuzzi offered a superb way to cool down after the steam room.  They served up a refreshing glass of unsweetened ice tea and cookies too.  Next up was the body wrap.  They rubbed an herbal & honey mixture over me and it felt like tiger balm; it was hot and soothing.  They they wrapped me up in plastic and covered my eyes with a wet towel.  Now this is where it got weird for me.  I was perfectly fine for the first few minutes and I was casually talking with Becky when the claustrophobia started to kick in.  I was mummified in plastic wrap and I started to feel really hot and uncomfortable.  I couldn’t move my arms at first and the more I thought about it, the more claustrophobic I felt.  I started to shimmy my arms to my chest and then I started to jerk around on the table like a gigantic worm in a cocoon.  I don’t think it helped that I couldn’t see through the towel on my face.  When the lady came to check on me, she started to take the wrap off and I felt so relieved.  It was like she was rescuing me.  After that, the rest of the treatment was top notch.  I dozing in and out of sleep during the massage and the only thing that kept me up was the gurgling noise I started to make when I was about to go into a deep sleep.  The facial was pretty good too, cause they also gave a decent head massage along with the procedure.  It was money well spent and I think a similar package like that would have cost $400 back at home.  I guess labour costs are relative to location.  Good for me, bad for the masseuse.

As far as I know, Koh Samui has one main road and everything is crammed onto this one main road for about 2 kilometres.  It’s pretty dirty and in some areas, it’s kinda stinky or else it’s kinda creepy.  The street is littered with vendor stalls, food vendors on bikes, restaurants and bars.  The street is dangerous in terms of the engineering around it.  The are hundreds of live wires hanging directly over the sidewalk and apparently one of my friends touched a nearby pole and felt a small shock from grazing the pole.  There were stray dogs everywhere and I’m sure they all had rabbies and fleas.  The bars are hilarious.  There were usually 5 or more women crowded around the front of the bars and I guess their main purpose was to lure stupid foreigners into the bar for drinks.  They would scream (stutter) "sex, sex, sexy man!".  At this point, I would like to note that they weren’t attractive and calling them anything but middle age whores would be generous.  Secondly, the crap coming out of their mouths was priceless.  Some of things they said was just nonsense and sometimes it was just lude.  Then there were the tranny people walking the street.  They tended to hang around one corner and they were kinda scary cause they would hiss and screech at people and they would also howl like a pack of hyenas.  It wasn’t a pretty site and just thinking about it now sends shivers down my spine.  Men in drag with fake boobs are hard on the eyes. 

We ate at some interesting places in Koh Samui.  The first night, we ate at a small little restaurant and tried all sorts of different Thai dishes.  It was reasonably priced and the food wasn’t too bad either.  The second night was horrible.  We ended up at some joint with super duper tiny servings.  We ordered pad thai and by the time it got to me, all that was left were sprouts.  The third night was much better. The girl at the spa recommended this joint right on the beach and it was definitely the busiest restaurant in that area.  There were tables set up all over the beach and you sat crosslegged, crouched or you could even lie down to eat.  We ordered king prawns, crab and squid.  All of the items at Arkbar were pretty good except for Mama’s Special Noodles which werne’t that special afterall.  Darren wanted to try it out and boy was it a bowl of crap.  It was basically instant noodles, and they weren’t even the good kind.

On our last day, most of the crew hung out at the hotel pool until we had to go to the airport to catch our flight to Bangkok.  Some of us went in search of a roadside pancake vendor.  It’s basically a crepe with bananas and chocolate and they call it a pancake.  It costs less than $1 and we walked down the main street for one, but I think they only come out at night cause we couldn’t find one.  We saw a dozen other bike vendors selling other things but no pancakes.  The other common thing here are painters.  There are dozens of storefronts that sell actual paintings of oil on canvas.  Their specialty is to copy real paintings and make fakes or they can make a painting of any photo you hand them.  Most of the paintings are quite impressive and I was tempted to buy one myself but I didn’t want to lug it around with 1.5 weeks to go still.  Henry on the other hand, didn’t seem to mind carrying an extra item around so he picked out a painting and asked how much it would cost him.  She said something like 2500 Baht, and he countered by saying he only had 1650 Baht.  She immediately said ‘Good price’ and accepted his offer, at which point Henry realized he probably could have gone a lot lower.  I suppose he could have rescinded his offer and walked away, but I guess he really wanted the painting and bought it any how.  I can’t wait to see that thing hanging on his wall.

We left for the airport and in the waiting area, they had a counter called Courtesy Corner with free drinks, cookies and pastries.  We thought that this was Bangkok Air’s way of providing us with some food since the flight was only one hour away from Koh Samui.  This wasn’t the case because they actually served up dinner on the plane.  It seemed so unusual.  We were up in the air and before I could nap for 15 min, they started serving hot meals with rice, thai curry, chicken, dessert, and drinks.  It wasn’t the most superb meal in terms of quality, but on the other hand, it wasn’t bad either.  Bangkok Air puts Air Canada to shame.  And before I could settle in for an after meal nap, we had landed in Bangkok.

Bangkok is quite nice.  It’s a lot more urban that I had remembered and pictured it to be.  There are lots of billboards and big brand named companies located here.  It’s also flippin hot here.  The temperatures are hovering around 35 degrees and my shirt is always wet from the buckets of sweat that I am perspiring.  It sucks ass and it really feels like I’ve just jumped into a swimming pool with my clothes on.  Traffic sucks here too and there are LOTS of scammers here.  All of the taxi drivers are scam artists.  They try to drive people to their destinations with pre-determined fares without using their metres and they hike up the fees like crazy.  During rush hour, all of the cabbies tried to get us to pay over 3x what it would cost had they just the metre to our destination.  You cannot trust anyone here.  Earlier in the morning today, Terry, Tams, Tania and Ron got taken to the Ferry terminal for some other scam when they were supposed to be taken to the Kings Palace where we were waiting for them.  Presumably, the taxi driver was in cahoots with some ferry people.  Anyway, they got out of paying for their ride to the ferry and hopped in another taxi.  Also in the morning, a cabbie fell in love with Darren.  Apparently Darren was sitting shotgun and the cab drive kept touching Darren’s leg.  When Darren paid the cab fare, he gave the guy a decent tip and the the dude grabbed Darren’s leg again, and this time proclaimed ‘I LOVE YOU!’.  I cannot even make this shit up cause it’s absolutely real!!  Ask him yourself even.

We checked out the King’s Palace and the Leaning Buddha today.  These are the two big tourist attractions here.  Both are very very impressive.  At the King’s Palace, their are buildings completely covered in gold and jewels.  It was amazing and Wes and Terry took a lot of pictures of the two joints.  Ask to look at them when we get back.  Later on, we rode in a Tuk-Tuk and those vehicles are a poor man’s version of a cab.  Darren and I were the odd men out when taking cabs to the Department Store and we decided to try it out rather than pay the more expensive cab fare.  Tuk-Tuk’s are just cabs on the back of a bike.  You get to enhale all of the pollution from the traffic and it kinda sucks in terms of comfort; I didn’t want to nap cause I could have easily fallen out of it.  It’s functional though and the driver agreed to drive us there for a decent rate.

Tonight, we went to the tallest building in town and headed up to the top floor where they have a restaurant and outdoor lounge called Soricco’s.  It’s breathtaking up there and at night, you could see the entire city from up above.  It overhangs a little bit over the building and you can see the ~64 floor distance to the ground below.  Freaky stuff!  My knees and legs ached a couple of times as I walked around the balcony.  It’s a long drop from there.  They also had a live band performing there and it was an awesome environment.  Cozy, live music, hot, reasonably priced food and an awesome view of the city.  Nice place and I highly recommend people to check it out.  For Dinner, we went to Somboon.  Some place famous for the crab and a couple other dishes.  We got their late and we were one of the last tables for the evening.  The food was excellent and cheap.  It cost something like $12 Cdn for crab, prawns, fish, soup, noodles, more prawns, basil beef, grilled cuttlefish, and veggies.  I think I forgot a dish or two too, but it doesn’t matter I guess.  The gist is that the food was good, cheap, and yummy.

Bangkok is too damn hot.  It’s sucking the life out of me and I dread the next 2 full days here cause it’s so damn hot.  Tomorrow, I think we’re gonna do a little shopping and possibly catch a movie.  Anyway, it’s late here again and I think I’ve said enough.  Long isn’t it today?  That’s because it’s 3-4 days since I’ve posted anything.  Sorry for the lack of photos too.  I’m not sharing a room with Wes and Lisa anymore so I don’t have access to their photos as readily as before.  I hope you enjoyed it regardless.  Good night!

~ Anthony

Our stop in HK seemed rather quick.  I don’t know why, but we were so unproductive on that leg of the trip and in the end, I think it will be the most unsatisfactory part too.  It ended wonderfully though.  My good friends Lieny and Dom got married in a very intimate environment.  It was surreal to see so many out-of-towners attending the wedding.  The ceremony itself went off without a hitch.  Nobody came crashing in an attempt to call off the wedding and nobody tripped or fell.  It was perfect.  Lieny looked beautiful and Dom was his dashing self.

I should note now that I felt very fortunate to be asked to be one of the groomsmen.  It’s always an honour when you can be there for a friend and stand alongside him when he completes his nuptials.  Overall, my job this time around was pretty simple and Dom didn’t demand much of me at all.  The only thing I had to do was hold onto the marriage certificate.  When the ceremony was over, we went for lunch at a Thai restaurant near a park.  The park itself was perfect for weddings.  As we ate lunch, we saw at least 3 other wedding parties taking pictures outside.  There was a waterfall and a pond with fish and turtles all over the place.  It was a stunning location.  For lunch, it was buffet style and the food was excellent.  I think I enjoyed the shrimp cakes and the curry the most.  So after lunch, the wedding party roamed around the area and took some photos.  The photographers had an interesting style to them and I just hope that their ideas and shots translate well to film.  They had us running towards the camera a few times, and they made the guys do some weird kicking shots too.  I think some of the best photos will be the ones of us eating ice cream and drinking water while walking through the Star Ferry tunnel and terminal.

At this point in time, everything was going smoothly until my so called friends decided to pull a prank on me at the restaurant.  We got up to leave and I left the marriage certificate on the table.  My asshole ‘friend’ Wes, also a groomsmen, saw it and instead of handing it back to me, he gave it to some other friends to hold onto but he decided not to tell me about it cause he was a fucking asshole.  I was in a frame of mind to punch him in the face and knock off his smile when he revealed it was a prank.  This was a shit decision on his part on so many levels.  It made me look and feel like shit when I realized 30 min later that I had left it there, and it made Dom feel even more crummy when he thought that it was lost.  Is there a better way to ruin a day and disrupt a good feeling than by doing something like that?  Or what if the other guys lost it or ruined it while transporting it around.  Who knows what could have happened to it.  In any case, it was a shit thing to do and I’m still pissed about it cause it was an inappropriate thing to fuck around with.  It’s was an original piece of documentation and one of a kind, not to mention it was just freshly signed an hour or two earlier.  I say to all of my so called friends that participated in this prank to ‘fuck themselves’ cause they were all cock suckers that showed poor judgment.  I’m glad they thought it was funny cause it made the ‘victims’ feel like shit on a grand day like a fucking WEDDING DAY!!!!  BASTARDS!  So fucking funny shitheads!

Other than that incident, the rest of the day went quite well.  The biggest downside in this particular case was wearing the monkey suit.  It wasn’t too bad at the ceremony cause for the most part, the place was well air conditioned and I think I managed to hold myself together quite well.  Even at lunch, it wasn’t too bad.  The worse was when we were taking pictures outside.  It wasn’t so bad taking pictures even, it was really the type of pictures that the photographers wanted us to do.  They asked us to run, jump, run some more, walk fast, run past Dom and give him high fives, pretend to kick a ball and they wanted all of the guys to embrace and skip together towards the camera.  If you haven’t noticed, these were all action shots that required me to get hotter and sweatier than I wanted to be.  I was dying in the monkey suit.  When our photos were done, we headed to Repulse Bay where the reception was going to take place and where Lieny and Dom’s wedding suite was located.  The place was unbelievable!  The suite was a two floor apartment style room.  It was located on the top floor (34th floor) and the building was situated on a mountain  overlooking the beach and water.  It was very impressive to say the least.  The other good thing about the place was the air conditioning and the furnishings.  It was heaven for me.  I took off my jacket and let my wet shirt dry while I curled up in a ball and took a nap.

Downstairs of Repulse Bay, there were two areas dedicated to the wedding.  The first part was the main reception area.  It was on the outdoor lawn that overlooked the water too.  It was a wonderfully unique setting and something that you would never see in Vancouver.  It was breathtaking!  Tables were set up to allow guests to mingle and enjoy beverages.  The humidity and the mosquitos kinda sucked but the actual venue itself was amazing.  The dinner itself was in the Verandah; a long banquet hall inside of Repulse Bay.  At dinner, it was a buffet again and the food was fantastic.  There was sashimi, fresh oysters, crab claws, shrimp cocktail, beef wellington, duck in thai curry, veal loins, lobster bisque, salmon, etc..  The food was top notch and I wish I had room for more.

There were several speeches and Dom’s brother floored me with some of the things he said.  The best part about his speech was that he winged the whole thing on the spot.  It was funny, witty, and he was bang-on with everything.  If you’re interested in some of the details, ask me when I get back into town.  The devastated look on Dom’s face was priceless.  Shortly after, Dom had prepared to sing a song for Lieny; 98 Degree’s ‘I Do’.  The live band started to play the music and it turned out that they had the wrong sheet music.  Dom was speechless and stunned.  It was another priceless Kodak moment and eventually Dom declared that ‘you have all just witnessed the most embarassing moment’.  The whole place was howling in laughter and took it in stride.  In the end, Dom did it a cappella.  Impressive!

The wedding ended and we capped off the night at a karaoke bar.  Even the bride and groom came out to sing a few songs and to have a few drinks.  It was a great way to end the night cause it was also our last night in HK. I was able to spend a little bit more time with my friends in HK and despite the fatigue, I was able to appreciate everyone’s company.  This lasted until 4am.  I loved every moment of it.

The next day, we flew out to Thailand.  It just so happened that Kerena and Dalidda was flying back to Beijing at the same time, so we got to say one last goodbye at the airport.  It’s great when things work out like that.

So we got to Koh Samui today and the place has a unique personality to it.  The airport was unlike anything I had seen before.  There weren’t really any buildings there.  Customs and security were done under outdoor style huts (no walls just roofs).  It was totally weird to have my passport stamped in an outdoor environment.  Also, I should note that I will be melting all over the side walk tomorrow.  It was about 8 pm when we got in and it was dark, hot, and humid.  I’m dreading the heat in the daytime.  I think I’m going to hate it a lot tomorrow cause it’s going to make me feel really uncomfortable.  We’ll see how it goes I guess.  For dinner, we roamed around until we found a decent looking place that was open.  I am going to enjoy the cuisine here.  I love most of the Thai food I’ve already had thus far.

Oh well, I think I’ve updated enough for tonight.  It’s 3am here and it’s time to pack it in.  We plan on getting up early for some breakfast buffet.  Sawat-dee!

~Anthony

Last night, we crapped around the hotel room until about 1 pm (similar to today), and then we went for a late lunch.  Considering that Terry is a bit of a ‘local’ here, his directions are terrible.  For example, we wanted to eat noodles for lunch and there’s this place across the street from the hotel.  It’s literally 25 feet away and directly across from the hotel lobby.  But Terry wanted to take us to a better place.  So we walked several blocks away and he couldn’t find it.  We started asking the locals where this place was and they kept telling us it was a few blocks back.  So we backtracked a few streets and Guess what??  It was the same freakin place directly across from the hotel.  WTF eh?  I think he did it on purpose to watch me work up a sweat.  Stupid!!

The food was good and I’m tempted to go back there again before we leave.  We’ll see I guess.  So eventually, we ended up meeting up with the rest of the guys and da boys hopped on a ferry and headed out to Macau for the day.  It’s about a one hour ferry ride away and it feels like you’re sitting in a giant airplane cause there’s assigned seating and trays attached to the back of the seats in front of you.  It’s relatively comfortable and the ferry moves at a pretty decent speed.

We hit a seedy bar first.  We went for a drink or two and ended up going to the Sands Casino for a bit.  They had a big ass stage at the bar area in the middle of the main floor with a steady stream of dancers, singers and other performers.  It made RiverRock look smalltime.  I should also mention for those that don’t know, Macau is kinda like Vegas.  It is it’s own little district like HK is to China so you have to go through customs and fill out arrival and departure forms to enter.  Macau is an impressive looking place.  It’s got grand hotel casinos all over the place, and the look and the feel of the city is very similar to Vegas.  There isn’t really a strip like LV and instead it’s one big giant community with lots of lavish looking buildings and great architecure.  Really, I noticed the buildings here.  They even had an outdoor amphitheatre.  Classy looking place without the volume of people on the streets.  It’s even hot like Vegas! There’s also a big Portugese community/influence there.  I hate casinos cause i’m a terrible table player.  It doesn’t matter where I am apparently because I still lose everywhere I go.  After losing, we went for a snack at the onsite McD’s and KFC.  The chicken wings rock out here.  They’re relatively cheaper than the fast food chains sell them back in Vancouver and they’re big and juicy. I think I’ll get some later today.

Next, we hit up some place called Jai Lai.  Cover was roughly a whopping $40-45 CDN.  I am going to spare everyone the details cause nobody wants to hear about naked girls dancing and stupid boys drinking.  Although I will say that the quality of the girls here is far and away much better than anything that we saw in the Philippines.  It’s like a breath of fresh air here.  The dirt dawg in me was so happy to see an all-asian line up of ‘entertainers’.  The guys back home would appreciate this.  Strutting and gyrating.  All good all good.  I have a new appreciation for Thai, Vietnamese and China girls now.  Those girls have some talent!

Next, we went for dinner.  We asked some concierge dude at a hotel and he recommended a portugese restaurant.  We walked down this street and for 20 min and discovered we had walked past it by a country mile.  So once again we backtracked our steps until we found it.  It was hidden in some alley and it was no wonder that we missed it the first time around.  The food wasn’t too bad, but it wasn’t anything spectacular either.  Maybe Portugese people have similar cooking styles to Chinese people because the food wasn’t too much different from what you would find at numerous restaurants in Richmond (a la Kam Do, Golden Award, etc…).

The one thing we failed to do out there was to get Portugese tarts.  They place famous for them in Macau was closed by the time we got around to them.  Sorry girls!!

Anyway, I think I’ve wasted enough of my morning on the ‘puter.  Time to mosey on out. 

~Anth

So we’ve been getting around here by foot and by metro and I quickly discovered that the $10 pair of fake adidas shoes that I bought in the Philippines are pieces of crap.  Both of my shoes were tight and my pinky toes felt like they were in a vice.  Comfort was obviously another problem.  Since if feels like I’m walking on cement, I’m going to throw them out soon I think.  They’re not worth lugging around and luggage space is precious now.

So today wasn’t a whole lot different from yesterday.  In fact, I ended up going to Mongkok again and spent most of my day there.  We went because James and Christina hadn’t gone there yet.  It wasn’t too bad.  We spent hours wandering around the same few blocks and discovered a few new buildings and shopping areas.  The strangest part of the night happened when we were walking down the street and suddenly about 150 people were standing in the street and sidewalk, and looking up at a giant screen.  I found this to be extremely odd cause if you haven’t been here before, the streets are usually packed with people moving all over the place.  Picture NYC Times Square, but covered with Chinese people.  The news was on and people were really interested in a story about a bus that had rammed into a building.  It was just a surreal moment to see all of these people stop dead in their tracks to watch the news.  I guess most people in HK just don’t have the time to stop and watch at home or pick up the newspaper.  It was a profound kinda silence and scene.  I think Lisa might have taken a picture of it.  I’ll check on it later.

There was this other strange crazy dude walking around on the street and he was cussing and swearing at the top of his lungs.  He was standing on the corner and he was banging his sign on the street and yelling at someone (or possibly no one actually).  You could see everyone sticking their heads out of the shops to take a peek.  Then the deranged little man knocked the garbage can over and started walking down the street.  People were fleeing and darting out of his path cause he was one angry SOB.  A few minutes later, I got to the next interesection and I looked down the street and I could easily tell which direction the crazy man had gone.  There were toppled garbage cans all over the place; oh the distruction!  Why does this world have psychos?

We went to the Sino Center too.  Last year, when I came, it was a building with several floors, all dedicated to fake DVDs.  You name it, they had it.  TV shows, movies, porno, chinese or english.  It was store after store of this stuff.  I guess they were raided one too many time by the police cause they weren’t fake DVD stores anymore.  Most of the businesses were regular stores selling the typical junk you see in HK; shitty clothes, kids toys, hello kitty crap, jewelery, etc..  There was this one place that sold DS Lites and other gaming things.  Well, most of us have DS Lites and JimmyT didn’t so he decided to buy one.  The store priced the DS units based on colour and it was a package deal that came with the flash cartridge, memory card and all the other essential items needed to start playing downloaded games.  Pink being the cheapest one and then white, and then black, then baby blue and the new navy blue from Japan.  They haggled the pricing with the vendor and Wes ended up buying one too.  We were already late for dinner and JimmyT, being the wishy washy guy he is, switched from Pink to White after the guy had started setting up the Pink unit for him.  Geesh.  Lucky for him, the vendor wasn’t too bothered by it.  Damn you JimmyT!

Later tonight, we went to this outdoor restaurant.  It was totally sketchy looking and the quality (read, cleanliness) was questionable, but we went and ate it anyway.  To combat any kinda bacteria or potential food poisoning issues, I decided to take a sip of beer after each bite.  We ate conche, fried pissing shrimp, and a bevy of other tasty items.  It’s been 3-4 hours since and I don’t feel any stomach problems so I guess I’m all good.  Let’s just say that I’m glad I took my Hep shots though.

Alright, it’s past 3 am here and I need my rest.  This place, this weather, and the commuting is sucking the energy out of me.  I think I’m sweating way too much.  I’m out!!

~Anthony

So it’s been a few days since I’ve jumped onto the computer and the first thing I noticed is that some prick (probably Darren) changed my MSN name to some vulgar thing about my love for little boys in Manila.  All false obviously!!  He’s a bastard and I’ll get him back by the end of this trip.  He’ll pay dearly cause I’m vindictive and mean.

Anyway, I just wanted to get that out there cause it pissed me off.  So we left Manila yesterday and it was kinda sad.  I had a really good time there and it was a great experience.  I know I definitely gained a few pounds considering all of our ’snacks’ were full blown meals.  We flew back on Cebu Air and they decided to play some games.  They’re supposed to be a ‘fun’ airline and I guess they try, but it’s not that fun.  The flight attendants got the passengers to play a speed game.  They would call out something and the first person to show it would win a prize.  So guess who ended up winning once?  Yours truely.  She wanted to see an airplane safety card and before she even finished her sentence I already whipped mine out.  That last line sounds a tad odd, but I’m gonna stick with it.  Wes claims that I barely beat him, but he was sitting next to me and I don’t think he even reached for it yet but the time I showed my safety card.  He’s slowww.  What did I win for my troubles?  A stupid bottle cooler thing to keep my beer cold.  Oh well.  I was still a winner.

HK is a totally different place from the Philippines.  It’s hot here too and I actually find the air worse here.  It’s smoggy all the time.  We haven’t done a whole lot here.  It’s definitely a slower pace here for some reason.  It’s almost too easy to get around here so maybe we just slow things down knowing we can get from one destination to another in a matter of minutes.  We sit around more and there’s less urgency to keep moving.  Like right now.  As I’m typing, Wes and Lisa are sitting next to me watching a movie (Thank You for Smoking is a fantastic movie by the way).

The other thing is that we’re a big group out here now.  Tams, Terry, Ron, Christina, James are here too as well as our friends and family.  Travelling in a large group makes decision making a bitch.  It hasn’t been to bad thus far, but it also slows things down too.  So for example, after deciding to go to Central, we were standing at the MTR station and we suddenly changed our minds and decided to go to Mongkok.  Overall, it was a good decision though.  The shopping was better and there was more to do there.  We went down a street that was similar to the Richmond Night Market.  The vendors there are hilarious.  If you ask them how much one of their items is, it’s safe to say that you can talk them down to about 40-60% of what they want.  It makes shopping pretty fun and the bargaining part is the best part.  If they say they want 160, tell them it’s too much and that you’ll give them 60 for it.  Or that the vendor down the street is selling it for 50.  Walk away and they almost always give in.  It’s great.  I think I’m buying stuff that I only partially want just because it’s cheap.  We’ve gotten to the point that we have to mind our luggage space now.  We’ve already bought too much stuff.

Speaking of space, this Hotel room is tiny.  I believe this will probably be the worse place we will be staying on this trip.  It’s so tiny.  We’ve crammed four people and all of our luggage and bags into a small room which feels like it’s about 400 sq feet.  The internet sux ass here and thus the lack of updates the past few nights.  We had the hotel come into our room and check into the problem with our internet service and there wasn’t anything they could do.  When they checked all of the local HK sites, they came up nice and fast.  When we checked web sites in North America, they would take forever to load.  Piece of crap!  That reminds me, the toilet is a piece of shit too, no pun intended!  It takes forever to flush and it takes about 5 min to re-fill the tank.  Not to mention it takes 4 flushes for us to completely empty the bowl.  Ackk..  I recommend never to stay at the Eaton Hotel here.

Last night we met up with Kelly.  I love that girl.  She hasn’t changed much in the last 6 years.  It’s too bad we don’t get to see her much any more.  We went out for Chinese food to eat goose.  It’s just like eating duck.  We went to a lounge for drinks in LKF and most of those places are a friggin rip off.  My martini was the equivalent of $20 cdn and the girls paid nearly $60 for a karafe of sangria.  Crazy.  It was fun hanging out though.  Dominique met up with us too.  To end the night, Lisa discovered she lost her bag of stuff.  I think Wes’ clumsiness is brushing off on her.

Ack, my memory is fading.  I don’t remember what’s happened the last few days.  Time to roll out..

~Anth

Day 4 and we start it off right by getting a massage.  We arrange for the same group of women as the day before, to show up at 7am.  Darren decided he wanted to lie on top of a pillow during his massage, so when he went back to the room to snag one, I stole his masseuse.  Well, I didn’t really steal her cause she approached me to get started.  Perahaps she didn’t want to work on a boney long body and preferred a softer wider one with me.  Whatever was the case, she was a lot better than the stinky women that rubbed me down yesterday.  Woot!

Since this was our last day at Boracay, we crammed a lot of things to do before we flew back to Manila.  We ate breakfast and showered and then we headed out to the foot spa, Footsies.  Cute name for a cute little place.  We showed up and they didn’t have enough people working there, so they made a phone call and some more showed up.  This is so typical here.  Make a phone call
and people just show up.  I don’t know where they come from but people just appear out of thin air.  We want 6 masseuses and 6 masseuses show up magically on the beach.  We want 6 people to give us pedicures, and 6 people show up within minutes and get to work.  It’s amazing stuff and I wish it was that easy back in Vancouver.  So back at the footspa, they had a dude show up and he was obviously a little on the fruity side.  I thought for sure that he would go straight to Wes, but apparently he liked tall native looking guys and selected Darren.  So we were each getting our feet soaked in a foot spa basin filled with warm water and bubbles.  It was a relatively pleasant experience.  Then they started working on our feet, by scraping off the dead skin. Wes just had to ask each of the workers who had ‘bad’ feet, "Does she have bad feet? Does he have bad feet?".  So he gets around to asking the woman working on me, and she nods and says ‘yes!’.  It wasn’t so much that she said yes, it was the way she said it with the expression on her face.  It was more like ‘OH YES!  His feet fucking suck ass’.  So right there, the whole place started laughing; Lisa leading the pack, Darren, Becky, Wes, Cheryl, all the other employees, the owner, the other client they had, and the owner’s dog.  Well, it seemed like everyone was laughing at me at least.  I was laughing right along with them, but it kept going.  My masseuse went on to tell Cheryl that I had the worse feet she had ever seen, and I guess it was supposed to make me feel better that she had only been at this type of work for 5 months.  Bitch!! Oh well, I made her work for her money and I guess that was worth it.  For once on this trip, someone in the room was sweating harder than me.  By the time she was done, my feet did feel and look a whole lot better.  It was money well spent!

We got back to the resort and immediately checked out.  We took another boat back to the island with the airport and then an hour or so later, we boarded Ghetto Air again.  This second time around, it was a different plane, but the exact same problems occurred.  There was smoke coming out from the ceiling and dripping water again.

.This time we weren’t phased by it. We landed safely
and everything was a-OK.

We headed back to Cheryl’s place and while stuck in traffic, we decided to get some Jollibees.  If you’ve never heard of it, it’s the biggest fastfood chain in the Philippines.  To put it into perspective, it outsells McDonalds, and at one time, McDonalds was thinking about closing up all of their restaurants here because they weren’t number one.  What a bunch of crybabies eh?  So Cheryl made another phone call and had someone pick us up some Jollibees for our return to the apartment.  They basically snagged a little bit of everything for us.  Burgers, fried chicken, spaghetti, palabok, meat pies, dessert pies.  It was already 5 pm by the time we got the food so I only had a bite of each item.  The deep fried tuna pie was suprisingly delicious and their burger was pretty damn good too.  I would describe it as a cross between a Wendy’s burger and a Triple-O burger.  They are famous for their fried chicken but we weren’t overly impressed by it.  It was dry and most of the pieces we received were white meat.  The palabok is a vermecilli dish and it was also quite tasty.  I would recommend giving the burger, the palabok and the tuna pie a try if you ever make it out to the Philippines.

So, thus far, there has been a lot of good eating on this trip.  Lots and lots of eating!  We already think that we’ve gained some pounds.  Lisa, who typically doesn’t each much at home, has been out-eating Wes.  This is no small feat so this goes to show that she really loves the food back here.  I think for the most part, the food has been excellent and the local cuisine has surpassed any expectations that I had.  They use a lot of vinegar here and everything is sour or uses a sour dipping sauce.  The people who have grown up here love eating green mangos and shrimp paste.  I tried it out and it sucks.  I don’t understand the appeal of it cause it’s sour green mangos with a salty shrimpy paste smothered over it.  The shrimp paste is kinda like an anchovie paste.  I guess you needed to grow up eating it to enjoy it.  I think it’s safe to say that it’s an acquired taste.

Later that night, we went out for dinner again with Lisa’s friends and famiy.  It was a bit of an informal wedding reception.  For those that don’t know, Lisa and Wes were married over a year ago in Vancouver, so they had a nice dinner set up at Gloria Maris again.  I recognized a couple of faces that showed up and everyone who was around our age was married and trading pictures of their kids.  Everyone here has children right after getting married.  When will one of you guys have some kids eh?  Lisa and Wes weren’t calling it a wedding dinner but it was clearly a meal for the friends and family that were not able to attend the wedding last year.  Closer to the end of the dinner, our table started to bang the glasses and plates to invoke a kiss (or two) from them.  Lisa told us not to do it, but we went ahead and did it anyway.  She was embarassed and threw a wet towel at us.  She could have taken out my eye!!  Ahh fun times!!  Dinner was great again.  Another spectacular meal and another notch on the belt.  Did I tell you how wonderful the food here was?  Oh man, it’s so good!  I don’t know who paid for it yet, but I will be sure to thank them tomorrow.

After dinner, Darren, Becky and I met up with Kerwin.  We headed out to UCC for some dessert and coffee.  The dessert sucked ass.  We tried three different kinds and none of them were appealing.  The tiramisu was soggy, the expressimo one I selected was rock hard and way too buttery.  Darren selected some chocolate peanut one which was the best of the three, but it still sucked.  I ordered a $4 hawaii kona coffee and it was that special either.  Overall, the place was not up to par with the rest of the food we had eaten here.  Oh well, I guess that was to be expected.

Anyway, it’s 6am here and I got up in the middle of the night specifically to write this up.  Time for some beauty rest now.  I gotta be up in 2 hours from now.  Catch ya later!

~ Anthony

Day 3 only and it feels like i’ve been on vacation for weeks.  We started off with garlic rice for breakfast again.  It’s so normal to have rice and meat for breakfast out here.  No complaints, but considering I typically don’t have breakfast, this is a big adjustment.  I’m almost certain I will be 10 pounds heavier when I get back.  God, I hope I’m wrong.

We ended up hiring the same crew from the day before.  It consisted of a local named Mario,two of his boys and one other fellow.  We headed back out to the waters to do a little fishing.  The plan was to catch lots of fish and have Mario pick up prawns, crab, clams, squid, and a bevy of other seafood items for a huge bbq lunch.  Well, fishing was a relatively big success.  Lisa’s cousin, Cheryl was the first of us to catch a fish.  I believe hers was the biggest one.  It was probably about 7-8 inches long.  Lisa caught one next, and then Wes caught two.  The game was on.  I didn’t want to be last at catching a stupid fish.  Becky basically said fuck it, ‘I don’t need to catch anything’.  Mainly because she was a big scaredy cat and didn’t like the idea of touching any fish.  I think we’re gonna have to take away her ‘badass’ title because she’s afraid of everything.  Darren, being Darren, didn’t care either and quit.  He ended up snorkeling again.  I stayed on the boat and eventually caught a tiny little tropical fish.  I don’t even know if you can eat those cause they are tiny and they look like Nemo’s.  The lunch feast that they prepared was great.  The crab and prawns were spectacular.  The crab was unlike anything I had tasted before.  The texture was soft and juicy.  I thought it was the best part of the meal.  I think the whole morning (fishing, snorkeling, eating) worked out to about $16 a person and it lasted about 4 hours.  What a smokin ass deal.

We headed back to the resort after several hours and rounded up 6 ladies to give us massages.  For about $7-8, we each had an hour long massage.  We laid out on the beach side-by-side and let them oil us up for some deep tissue massages.  It was pretty good except when I rolled over on my back to let her massage my face, I could tell that she had a bit of an odour problem.  That kinda ruined the whole experience for me.  It was definitely no Salma Hayek (yeah, I know she’s hispanic and not Philippino), but it woulda been that much more enjoyable if it was.  You get what you paid for and I guess you cannot expect much more for the price point, although no one else said that their masseuse stank like B.O..  We will probably get them to give us another massage bright and early in the morning; like around 7am.  I just hope that I don’t get stuck with the same one as yesterday, or hopefully she’s had a shower by morning.  Since we leave around noon tomorrow, we gotta get as much done as possible.  We still haven’t experienced the manicure and pedicures either (I’m not gay and besides, it’s Wes that really really wants it more than anyone else).

Some how, we managed to get a colony of ants to show up in our room.  They were crawling around right next to my bed and it turns out that we might have brought them into our room cause they were crawling all over this picnic style basket that we had been using for snacks.  It was freakin gross and we needed to call in room service to fix the problem.  They came in a sprayed the counter with bug spray and it pretty much disintegrated the ants.  I’m not surprised cause the aerosol spray they used was clearly toxic.  The smell was brutal.  They also changed the bed sheets and I’m pretty sure the ant problem was gone, but I still wasn’t going to sleep there.  So we ended up playing a game of paper, scissor, rock to see who would get which bed for the night.  Darren lost and he promptly decided that he didn’t want to take the chance either and ended up sleeping in the girls room with his wife.  That pussy!

So all week, we’ve known about this bar called Coco Mongos or something like that.  Apparently they have this challenge for customers.  If you can down 15 shots of tequila, they’ll enshrine your name on their wall.  For some reason, this sounded like a good challenge when I initially heard about it.  By the end of today, I wasn’t so sure if it was such a good idea.  I mean, I wanted to have my name on the wall forever, but I didn’t want it to say ‘R.I.P. Anthony Chu, October 12, 2006 - Suddenly died after his 13th shot’.  I said if Darren would do it, I would do it, but Darren declined.  I should also mention that the hotel’s had Darren’s name wrong the whole time we’ve been here.  They had the reseveration and all written notes and letters addressed to Darren Doo.  I don’t know why, but it’s just funny to us cause it just sounds so unusual.  Anyway, Darren Doo said Darren Don’t so our claim to fame in Boracay became a pipe dream.  No enshrined wall plaque for us!!  Anyway, I think it was the right call, cause I don’t it woulda been worth it to down that many shots.  I didn’t want to end up in a friggin village ‘hospital’ with some dirty tube down my throat.  Our better judgement probably saved our lives.

So that was our day.  It ended early tonight (around 10pm).  Everyone’s tired from being in the sun and we wanted to get up early to get another stinky massage.  So that’s it for now.  Until we meet again.  Over and out!

- Anthony

So Day 2 today and we flew off to beautiful Boracay.

Enroute to Boracay, we boarded a small prop plane with Asian Spirit. What a piece of crap to put it lightly.  I bet that the plane was at least 35 years old.  There were friggin ashtrays in the seats.  When was the last time you saw an ashtray attached to the seat of a plane?  It must have been 20 years since I’ve seen one.  But that wasn’t the best part of the 40 min ride.  The plane even came with it’s own ’smoke machines’.  No joke, there was some type of steam or smoke spewing out of the top of the plane.  And it wasn’t just in one small area of the carrier, it was all across the plane.  Frightening at best.  Then there was the water dripping from the ceiling.  Freakin gorgeous!

Anyway, off to the beach.  I’ll update again later.

- Anthony

This afternoon, we managed to hire some local dudes to take us out for some snorkeling.  Snorkeling sounds like a pretty damn good idea for the average person, but for people that don’t know how to swim, it turns into an hour of trying to stay afloat with copious amounts of salt water.  It wasn’t all a horrible experience though.  I was able to stick my head under water a few times and I was able to feed the fishies crackers.  They were literally eating out of the palm of my hand. 

Overall, it was a fairly enjoyable experience.  On the way back to the resort, Lisa had to pee really badly.  The ride from the snorkeling area to the resort was a solid 25 min ride and we tried our hardest to make her pee her pants.  She wasn’t too impressed, but I think everyone else had a good time trying to make her have an accident.  She should have just gone in the water and relieved herself.  It turns out that Wes pissed three times while in the water.  It leads me to wonder if the water was really that salty, nasty, and painful on the throat and nasal passages, or was it the extra concentration of urine that was the real culprit.  Disgusting eh?  The consolation was that Wes ended up having itchy ass.  I’d like to think it was because he was sitting in his pee drenched shorts for a couple of hours.  hehe..

For dinner, we ate some authentic local food.  We went to some chicken place and Lisa and Cheryl ordered some great items.  Wanger, you really woulda enjoyed the bbq chicken amongst the other dishes, including pork, fish cooked in vinegar, fried fish, soup.  To get to this place, we needed to take a Tricycle.  It’s basically a tiny cab attached to a motorbike.  If you sit in the front, it’s not so bad.  You get a lot of head room and it’s relatively comfortable.  If you sit in the back, you’re liable to smack your head on the roof or on the wall and you are also susceptible to the back splash of the nasty mud puddles in the street.  The place is littered with stray dogs and some look like they’re dead based on the way they’re sprawled across the floor, but I don’t think they really are. 

We’re tired as shit and that’s all I’m gonna say for today.  Day 2 is over.

Nite, Anth