Dinner for Schmucks

Yesterday marks a day that will drastically change the remainder of this trip..for the better. The Point System was established.  As Gabe and I stopped to shoot the insanity that is Saigon traffic we lost our accompanying travelers Jordan and Scott.  They actually seemed to have evaporated into thin air but we spent little to no time looking for them knowing finding them would be near impossible. Realizing it was the first time we had been away from them at this point in the trip, we thought ahead to reuniting and trading stories with them and knew we had to come home 'with more points' than they would. We kicked things off early with a point for chocolate mocha and choco-banana milkshakes (respectively) accompanied by spring rolls and onion rings.  After lunch we met some local kids that put us back on the scoreboard again and we will have a video ASAP to explain.  We returned to the hotel in the late afternoon to find Jordan and Scott and made dinner plans.  I recommended the one place that I remembered eating my first time in Saigon for some vietnamese barbecue and we took off in a 75 cent cab ride in the rain.  Bo Tung Xeo restaurant quickly became our favorite place in all of Saigon.  We started with a round of local beer called 333 or "Bah-Bah-Bah" and an order of fried scorpion.  The claws, legs, tail and stinger (edible - subject to manhood) are crisped to perfection but the belly is soft to keep ya guessing.  Next they set a coal barbecue on our table and we chose from an array of meets from kangaroo to rat - we decided upon beef, crocodile, and ostrich.  And then more ostrich - possibly the greatest tasting meat on the face of the earth - especially when cooked inches from your plate by a chopstick wielding waiter named 'Li'. We ended the night with a few more bah-bah-bahs and few games of pool and called it a night.  Points abound and all around.

Again there will be more to come soon - food porn that will have you licking the screen and our very first video webisode.

WSDL,
MM

Saigon's Revere Beach

Today I straddled a sixty year old Vietnamese man for hours. It was amasian. Alright I was on the back of a motorbike.  We paid four bikers to take us to the beach early this morning.  We bumped and bounced probably an hour and then rode a fifteen minute ferry and continued biking to our first stop – Monkey Island.  Imagine what you will, but there was no actual island just a mangrove full of monkeys.  Conveniently next to the monkey area was a crocodile farm where I paid fifty cents to buy a snake that was then attached to a fishing line and bamboo pole – CROCODILE FISHING!  It was everything you can imagine and more – dangling a snake in front of a 16 plus foot croc just snapping away at it.  Good wholesome family fun and the closest I will ever get to a dinosaur.  From then on our day was certainly less eventful though nice –we enjoyed barbecued shrimp with rice and vegetables and walked along a rather polluted beach.  Our reuturn trip involved several downpours and some rather sketchy biking through a foot and a half or two feet of water.  Now we are back at our hotel and finally dry watching Batman Forever and a lightning storm out our window.

MM

Breakfast of Champions

Chicken Pho and Sweet Iced Tea

Reunited at Last

BOOM.  I was a little later than the Cathay Pacific kids but United Airlines did right by me and I've arrived in Vietnam.  Overall the trip from Boston to San Fran to Hong Kong to Saigon was uneventful - until the first second we touched down on southeast asian soil.  The elderly vietnamese woman sitting next to me (with an empty seat between us) seemed very nice from the get go, smiling being our only universal language.  She woke me up when our meal arrived mid flight and even separated my chopsticks and rested them next to my cup-o-soup.  Again I fell asleep after the meal until the pilot came over the loudspeaker and announced our descent.  The women seemed fidgety and I thought nothing of it at first but what happened next will explain and yet only experiencing it would have done it justice.  The landing gear is prepared and we touchdown relatively smoothly and BOOM the lady jumps from her seat as were still zooming along the runway.  The flight attendants shouted at her to sit back down and as they do I catch a whiff of the most vile smell imaginable - yep, human feces.  The lady with her drawers full of cup-o-soup is literally climbing seat rest to seat rest towards the bathroom as the G forces of the plane resist her journey.  Finally a flight attendant gets up from her seat and drags the lady back to hers - two feet from me. I am pretty sure I held my breath all the way off the plane, across the terminal, and through customs.  If I was in any way doubting how wild and weird a few months in southeast asia would be, this was certainly a shit-smeared slap in the face wake up call. WE HERE!!!!! fallin asleep in front of a tupac movie now but more to come soon enough.
M.M.

Hittin' the Ground Bloggin'

Okay, so after this post the blog will officially be a travel blog as we have touched down in Vietnam.  Jordan, Scott, and I are currently waiting for Miles at the airport.  He should be here in less than an hour.  If you don't know who Jordan and Scott are, you will soon - provided you keep following what we write.  Which you should obviously do.  The plan is to spend the next week in Ho Chi Minh City until we take a boat up the Mekong to Siem Reap with our friend Jed and his father.  The trip here was pretty easy with no real hiccups along the way.  We flew Cathay Pacific, which you may or may not care about.  For those of you who do care this airline is unbelievable.  The airplanes were new and the seats incredibly comfortable with little personal TVs on the backs.  We spent 50 extra bucks to fly Cathay Pacific which, according to Jed, have mostly new planes.  It was totally worth it.

I promise in the days, weeks, and months to come we will have way more interesting shit to blog about.

GZ

Yo, Check Me Out

"If you didn't get to see us then this was your last chance.  Peace, we out like a boner in sweatpants."

- Sangamob

Down to the Wire

Last night while I was lying in bed waiting to sleep, it was the first time that this trip actually felt real.  The first time anxiety overwhelmed excitement.  It had mostly passed by the time I rose up out of bed this morning.  In less than 48 hours we will be on a plane bound for Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam and shortly thereafter Cambodia.  Stay tuned... this is gonna get good!