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02-22-2011, 04:42 PM
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#51 (permalink) | |
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Don't call me Shirley
Join Date: Jun 2010
Location: London
Posts: 3,271
Internets: 220249
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02-22-2011, 05:03 PM
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#52 (permalink) |
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Don't call me Shirley
Join Date: Jun 2010
Location: London
Posts: 3,271
Internets: 220249
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I have to switch from the "Good joke FC" team to the "Poor taste" team. Here's why. At first I thought it was funny, mostly because I knew from the outset that I was not dead. But I just had to post on fb "Sorry if you guys heard I was dead, it was a rumor, I'm OK". And I had to email my parents and say "Sorry if someone called you and told you I died in Asia, I didn't." And I'm wondering if I should email my company's partner and tell him "Hey I'm not really dead." Except I don't even know which partner to email. So I'm flipflopping on the "It was a funny gag" thing and now negrepping FC. Unfortunately the posrep and the negrep net out positive, so I still owe you a clay buccholz special.
EDIT: Just got this Thank goodness that we did not hear this. Tell [DJFC] he is an asshole for me. Moms |
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02-22-2011, 06:09 PM
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#57 (permalink) |
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MURICAN
Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Virginia
Posts: 5,136
Internets: 247091
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You didn't have to put that in your facebook or contact your parrents. I already contacted everybody who was involved.
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 The basis of our governments being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter. But I should mean that every man should receive those papers and be capable of reading them. |
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02-22-2011, 06:24 PM
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#58 (permalink) |
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COME ON YOU YANKS
Join Date: Feb 2002
Location: Indiana
Posts: 15,541
Internets: 305563
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I definitely see Kremlin's point in being angry about this, though. While it was confined to Nubblies and he had no BS to deal with, I certainly wouldn't have...but having it spill into the real world where he has to clean up a bit of a mess? Of course.
Sure, FC had no way of knowing that there was a lurker who would spread it around (in fact, that particular assumption is what made Kremlin the perfect subject for this). Obviously there was no ill intent there. That doesn't change the result, though. Of course, UB and I are just as guilty as FC for knowing about/encouraging it. We just aren't the ones that had our faces on it from the beginning. For my part in the shit you've had to deal with, I apologize, Kremlin. I still think that, if you're name isn't "thekremlin" and you still feel wronged by this, you should see a physician immediately. There's a chance you're a woman. |
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02-22-2011, 08:28 PM
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#61 (permalink) |
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Jelqing for Jesus
Join Date: Oct 2005
Location: Charlotte's spare bedroom
Posts: 3,079
Internets: 194538
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I'm thinking kremlin has been a pretty good sport about all of this. Well handled on his part.
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02-22-2011, 09:09 PM
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#62 (permalink) |
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Long Live Dixie
Join Date: Mar 2005
Posts: 166
Internets: 35125
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It was me. I am the one that ruined FC's plot to 'ruin lives one at a time.' I lurk on nubblies daily so that I can catch the latest vegan videos that Blonde posts.
Yesterday I got on saw this thread..thought 'holy shit that's insane' never even considering that it was a joke. I met kremlin once while in Chicago and sent a text to our friend nowski. Nowski immediately calls freaking out and then in turn calls half of Chicago to verify Kremlins death..by this time I get home tell my woman that a 'guy on nubblies died' which she responds with are you sure its not a joke...I start considering FC's posts and thinking about how much of an asshole he is..I check back on nubblies and saw FCs post about it being a joke..I let nowski know and FC calls trying to figure out how the hell it got to Chicago. I apologize to FC and Kremlin for taking it outside of nubblies. I know it created some issues for you both.. And Blonde I hope your friends foot has healed. |
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02-22-2011, 09:22 PM
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#64 (permalink) | |
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Emperor Meow
Join Date: Sep 2004
Posts: 9,314
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#YOLO
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02-22-2011, 09:28 PM
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#65 (permalink) | |
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Jelqing for Jesus
Join Date: Oct 2005
Location: Charlotte's spare bedroom
Posts: 3,079
Internets: 194538
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02-23-2011, 02:34 AM
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#67 (permalink) | |
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MURICAN
Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Virginia
Posts: 5,136
Internets: 247091
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The basis of our governments being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter. But I should mean that every man should receive those papers and be capable of reading them. |
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02-23-2011, 02:41 PM
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#69 (permalink) | |
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Senior Member
Join Date: Jul 2003
Location: Warsaw
Posts: 4,220
Internets: 124047
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The 2nd post that has made me laugh in this thread. The first one was UB's commentary on Blonde's post about said friend. | |
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Nubblies: If we put up with Felix, we will put up with you too.
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02-25-2011, 03:42 PM
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#70 (permalink) |
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Don't call me Shirley
Join Date: Jun 2010
Location: London
Posts: 3,271
Internets: 220249
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OK. About time for me to do a nice little write-up of this trip. This is a somewhat daunting task, to be honest.
My trip was to cross three countries, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Thailand. I had a fear of things not going as planned, so I didn't plan anything. No hotels or transportation was prebooked, and I only brought one bag with a little over a week's worth of clothes, figuring I'd buy new clothes as I went. The one planned event was the full moon party in koh phangan, an island to the south of thailand very close to Koh Samui. The whole trip I would be able to look at the sky, and by the size of the moon know how far away the trip's finish line, a legendary and foreboding beach party. The flight to was relatively pleasant, if long. I like travelling like most people, but unlike most I actually like the actual moving, the getting-from-paint-A-to-point-B. It's very cool to start this process in a very familiar place and when it's all done, you're someplace very different. The 16-hour flight ended in singapore, where I had a brief layover. While at the airport, I had a bowl of pig intestine soup. It was offal. I wondered why it was easier to navigate an airport in Singapore than Logan Airport in Boston. Then a quick 2 hour hop to Ho Chi Minh City. It was the second day of the year of the tiger. I was in Hanoi a few years ago and loved it, which was why I wanted to start this trip back in Vietnam. HCMC, or Saigon, seemed to me to be a slightly busier city. I was staying by the Ben Thanh market, which is a big area for backpackers. Within this small area there were a lot of white people, during the day you would venture out and then not see any at all. The hotel I picked out was pretty cool, run by two sisters who spoke good english and were very friendly. I dropped my stuff off there and then left almost immediately to explore. The very first thing I did was park myself where I could snag some pho. I love pho. It's probably my favorite food and when I am executed someday it will be my last meal. For those not familiar, it's a beef soup filled with vermicelli and comes with sprouts, mint leaves, chili peppers, thin slices of beef, and tripe. Always served so that you can augment the taste, adding chili sauce, limes, peppers, whatever. You eat it and it fills your stomach because it's mostly water, and you sweat because I like to add spice, and it's a very very satisfying meal.  A note on the beer. You guys probably know me enough to know I'm kind of an alcohol nerd, and I couldn't tell the difference between all the beer brands, they were all the same. The beer in the above is "333" or "Ba Ba Ba". It is incredibly light, sometime referred to as steam beer, and doesn't fill you up at all, and it's really what you need when walking around the city at 85 degrees and humid. This whole trip, when I drank it was mostly beer, until the full moon party. Two other drinks that I enjoyed immensely. The first is the coffee, which is dark and thick, very strong and probably lethal. Enjoyed with sweet milk, and I always had it iced. The other drink is "sinh to" which I think translates to "water ice", basically fruit smoothies, but they always somehow taste more like the fruit than the fruit does itself. Watermelon is my personal favorite. So I ended up getting pretty drunk on that first night, hopping from backpackers bar to backpackers bar. It did not take long to make friends at each bar, you just find a white person and ask where they're from, conversations follow. The first night I hung out with two different pairs of americans. I was carrying around a small notebook and one of the americans seized it at one point and the next morning it was full of bizarre notes. These people claimed to have been to london and in fact claimed to know my neighborhood, south ken, but then proceeded to name landmarks in the area that simply don't exist. In my first brush with Asian Holiday Vice (AHV), while sitting at a bar a girl immediately sits next to me and puts one hand on mine and the other on my leg. It was too early in the trip for a pro, so I tried to turn her away, but not before she tells me "I suck you" and giggled like it was the world's funniest joke. Heck maybe she wasn't a pro, and asian girls just love me. Vietnam is cheap. Very cheap. A beer costs 10,000 dong, which is like 50 cents. A bowl of pho is about the same. A silk shirt costs about $2. You also have to haggle for everything, it's very standard, to try to get close to the price asian people would pay. Sometimes you feel quite silly when you realize your succesful haggling just saved you a quarter. My first day I did the proper tourism thing. War remnants museum and the reunification palace. That palace was basically the white house of the old south vietnam government. There were a lot of pictures of the NVC tanks rolling over the gates, which was pretty much the official end to the Vietnam War... this was of course after the US had evacuated. Here's the palace:  The war museum, not much surprising. The strongest impression I got was from the wing about Agent Orange. Apparently children are still born deformed because we used this stuff 40 years ago. You see that display and you are not filled with patriotic pride. One moment of nervousness, at one point this day I've walked all over the city and been to two museums, and it's only 3 PM. At this point I kind of internally panic, because I'm wondering what the hell I'll do for 3 whole weeks. Good news is after a week this type of thought didn't even occur to me. My pattern in Saigon while walking around the city was basically: sit at a street stall and eat pho, drink some beer... then wander around for a while, explore the city. I walked across the whole city several times. Basically walk around till you're hungry again. Another great meal I had was claypot braised fish. It was cooked so well you didn't even chew it, it just melted.  I stayed in Saigon I think for three nights. After that I arranged transport to Phnom Penh. I signed on for a Mekhong Delta tour, taking the long way around. Very glad I did it, it was cool to see the village areas, people living in such poverty but it doesn't really matter because they have fish. We also stopped by a village and rode bikes to a restaurant where I had a fried elephant-ear fish, including its eyes which are a delicacy. Stayed that night in a floating hotel, then crossed the next day into Cambodia and landed at Phnom Penh. This trip included a van, a bike, and like 6 different boats... I also managed to get sunburned on my face and some sunglasses raccoon eyes.      So that was Vietnam, next I will post about Phnom Penh and Siem Reap but I'm going to take a break for the moment. |
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02-25-2011, 04:31 PM
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#71 (permalink) | |
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I make bad decisions.
Join Date: Dec 2004
Location: The Desert
Posts: 3,017
Internets: 108015
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cool write-up. I'm happy to now actually know what pho is. I have friends that would always talk about getting it in phoenix, but never actually asked what it was or have yet to try it. Looks/sounds pretty good. | |
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02-25-2011, 06:26 PM
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#72 (permalink) |
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Don't call me Shirley
Join Date: Jun 2010
Location: London
Posts: 3,271
Internets: 220249
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So Cambodia. We landed at Phnom Penh and I pretty much just hopped off the boat instead of sticking around and coordinating a hotel with the other people from the trip, some of whom were pretty cool... I preferred to run solo at this point. Took a couple laps around the area by the river that seemed to be nicest before settling on renting a room that was upstairs from an irish pub. Wandered around the town for a while before running into this french dude who had been on the Mekhong boat, the guy had been living in Jakarta which sounded pretty cool. He had just finished eating a happy pizza, and that sounded alright to me. So we went to "Phnom Penh Happy Herb Pizza" and I asked the waitress for a happy pizza.
"So... you want a happy pizza?" "Yes please." "And you want it.... extra happy?" "Yes... yes i do." So ate the pizza and drank some beer, and got going. We went down to one of the bar streets (street #51) and kind of got lost along the way. Saw a white guy and asked him which way to a good bar. "Oh you want to go that way... go to this bar called the heart of darkness, its very good. But I'm not going there, I'm going here" and he turned off to go to a bar with about 5 gorgeous cambodian girls beckoning outside. The bars here were pretty much all "hostess bars" where basically the girls who work there are constantly flirting with you and can presumably be brought home for a price. My understanding is that their way around prostitution laws is that you don't pay for sex, but pay the bar because you're leaving with one of their employees. At this point though, I'm starting to get super paranoid from the pizza. The sight of hot ass cambodian girls dancing with fat white guys is really creeping me out, and I start thinking "every one here is an actor" and pretty soon I'm sure that the french dude is somehow in on it. Other things, like forgetting how large the room I was in was, and then upon seeing it, thinking sliding doors were somehow involved.... it was not the best reaction to drugs I've ever had. At one point I was sure I saw the guy who'd directed us to heart of darkness, and that pretty much blew my mind. Stayed out for a bit but I was way too fucked up to get into anything good. The next day I was completely hungover, felt deathly terrible all day and it was the only wasted day of my whole trip. The next day I did the tourist thing. First was the Sluol Teng S21 facility. Basic history lesson is that the Khmer Rouge regime, headed by Pol Pot who seemed to be a psychopath, turned this high school to a prison facility. Prisoners there were tortured to try to get them to admit to being secret CIA agents, and of the thousands that entered there were only a dozen survivors. Pretty harsh. After that went to the Chuong Ek "Killing Fields" which is where prisoners were shipped before they were executed. It was very bizarre, because the fields, which were by a lake, are now very peaceful and lovely. Very strange to have that up against a brazen genocide. The monument in the center is filled with shelves of human skulls.     After the fields I hopped on a bus that would take me, after 8 hours, to Siem Reap. Siem Reap was a lot nicer than PP, more laid back, less aggressive locals selling shit. Basically the only reason the city existed was to be close to the angkor wat temples, so there were a lot of hotels and a lot of BARS. Tons of bars. I spent my first day there travelling the temples and it was actually really cool. I did that for a solid 8 hours, there are so many temples and the area is massive. The age and scale of the temples was certainly impressive but the great thing about it was how well the artifacts mesh with the nature and fauna there. Trees growing through the floors and ceilings of temples, roots wrapping around statues. Monkeys just chilling by the paths. I dug it very much. I have about 200 pictures just from the temples, here are a few highlights:        That night was the one I described already. The BBQ, the bar crawl, the lady of the night. One of the best nights of the entire trip. If you haven't seen it, I'm in Spain Next stop: Bangkok, Thailand. I will write that up tomorrow, my friends. |
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02-26-2011, 06:15 AM
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#75 (permalink) |
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Don't call me Shirley
Join Date: Jun 2010
Location: London
Posts: 3,271
Internets: 220249
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So Thailand composed about half the trip. I was pretty hungover on the trip to Bangkok, and it was in a van, not a sleeper bus, and I was sitting right over the wheel at the back of the van wedged up next to some spanish dude, it was a pretty miserable ride and I couldn't stop sweating. Worth it, though, when we finally got to Ko Sahn Road in Bangkok. This is the area that the main character is in at the beginning of "The Beach." It's a long street, during the day it is full of T-shirt and chatchke vendors, at night it fills up with street food vendors. Full of bars and hotels. Here are pictures, day and night.
  For me, the street food was a huge attraction. I didn't eat in restaurants much at all while I was in Bangkok. One particular stall I visited several times, it had about a dozen trays, and they just scooped curry or whatever over rice onto your plate. (This is the first of the food pictures below, and the red sausage was incredible.) Another good one was the hundreds of pad thai carts all over the city, easiest thing in the world. To be honest I nearly made myself sick I was eating so frequently. There was a stall where a woman was selling fried bugs, and I walked past it several times before I got the courage to buy and eat some. I had mantises, crickets, locusts, and grubs. I pussed out when it came to the cockroaches which were huge. I didn't love the taste of the larger bugs, like the mantises, but I did like the locusts which were much smaller. And unfortunately the pictures of the bugs are on my iphone which broke. So there is no photo evidence. The green drink pictured below, I have no idea what it was but it was cold and tasted like freshly cut grass smells.     I was pretty tired my first night in BKK, so I didn't go out very hard, just had a big meal of raw shrimp which despite being spicy I didn't enjoy that much, and then beers on Ko Sahn. And to be honest, after that I went back to the hotel and watched "When Harry Met Sally" in air conditioning. Hey I was tired. The next morning I hung out for a while at the pool on the roof of the hotel. While there I met two Americans who were aggressively pursuing Asian Holiday Vice... they had gotten in the night before from Seattle and hadn't slept yet, and I'm pretty sure they were coked up that AM. One of them told me he'd carried coke up his ass on the flight. Now smuggling drugs INTO thailand seems like taking sand to the beach, but risking jailtime to do so, but to each his own. Before I left the pool we arranged to meet up that night to go to some Ping Pong shows, because it was Valentine'sDay, after all. I spent some time wandering the city and looking at the temples. One of them I had to buy pants to get into, no shorts allowed, but the pants I bought are sick so I don't mind. After that I went to train at BKK BJJ, the school that graciously took me in for the weak. I was a little disappointed that it was mostly ex-pats, no thais, and on that first day there were no high level belts, only one blue, and they were more impressed by my game than I was with theirs, but I was pleased that they had a wrestling practice back-to-back with the gi. And practices are much harder in the thailand weather. I went back a few days later for a morning class and there was a much better level of competition, including a pair of tough purples from Japan. I enjoyed training with these guys quite a bit, it's always amazing how easy it is to fit in at a BJJ school, theyre all the same across the world apparently and I mean that in a good way.  That night I met up with the two guys from the pool and we went to Phet Pong, pretty much the sex tourism area. First we went to a place that was pretty much just a strip club, but without lapdances. Basically there was just a stage and about ten girls on it, just kind of dancing as if they were on a regular dancefloor, but topless and in skirts and nothing under. And the girls were hot, probably average age of 17, just hotass thai girls. We had some drinks and enjoyed the sights, but this place wasn't what we came for. The Ping Pong show was kind of... well, interesting. First off, it was the only time I was on the second floor of a building all month, the place was kind of dingy and there were like 4 or 5 girls on the stage basically doing tricks with their pussies. Shooting ping pong balls, smoking cigarettes, writing our names, launching darts to pop balloons. I watched this while one sat, topless, on my lap, rubbed my crotch and tried to convince me to go to a backroom and buy a blowjob. Her main selling point? The backroom had AC. No joke. The next morning I booked a flight to Koh Samui for the following day. The moon, by this point, was fat in the sky each night. I spent the day walking around the city and visited more temples, but my focus was shifted. It was almost time for Koh Phangan. |
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