[Mr. Blonde]

On top of having less time when traveling in general, you'd be amazed at how little time you want to spend online when you're paying for it. Thailand was awesome, ended up spending a whole month there, somehow completely sex free, and certainly not by choice. Somewhere along the line I decided hitting on chicks was for douchebags and only douchebags, and that attitude clearly isn't working out on me. You have to admit it though, almost every time you've witnessed a dude hit on a chick, he's been a complete douchebag or complete loser. There are the exceptions, but everytime I see a db make his move I cringe worse than watching Steve Carell on The Office. I often wonder if that's what I looked like in what I see (unfortunately) in my sexual glory days in AZ. I can't seem to reconcile acting like a douchey fuck just to...fuck. Seems so...compromising. Without being too self-stroking, it seems that i'm having quite a bit of difficulty balancing my intellect with pursuing chicks, bro.

On top of that, somehow I only tend to befriend women with boyfriends, gay dudes and guys who just flat up don't care about hooking up with girls, which makes it a lot harder to approach a group and snag one when you're the only one looking to fuck. But I suppose that will surface in another thread.

Thailand was awesome. I'll post more in depth later, but in short I partied a bunch on Khaosan Road in Bangkok, saw some famous temples, traveled around on scooter a bunch to some amazing sites, rode and swam with elephants, laid on tigers ("on" being the key word, don't get excited, Mistoffolees.), traveled on night trains and night buses, and ended the trip with a week on an island and the infamous Full Moon Party on Koh Phangan, which was insane. No drugs were had at the party, however, despite there being ample supplies of mushroom milkshakes and apparently ecstacy, see above post about befriending relatively lame people. If i'm going to trip balls, i'm doing it under the buddy system.

Today I left Bangkok and arrived in Vietnam. I met some pretty cool French dudes and am staying at the same guesthouse. Almost got into a fight with the taxi driver from the airport who was trying (and succeeded) in jewing us out of an extra dollar. The principle, of course. Wasn't me who was being antagonistic this time however, which should be surprising for those who know me. I was being pretty calm and it wasn't until he grabbed my bag after I gave him the agreed fare that I paid him the extra he claimed he was due. Basically they gave us a taxi van (for 3 people) instead of a regular taxi (without asking and with the sole intention of extorting the extra dollar out of us.) Like I said, it was definitely the principle and the fact we had an agreed fare before we left the airport. Normally I wouldn't let something like this go, but this crazy fuck had a look in his eye i've never seen from pretty much anybody but I can imagine it's how a guy high on PCP wanting more would regard a police officer who just confiscated his stash. Usually you can haggle, bargain, compromise, joke, insult, etc. and it's still a relatively safe situation. This guy raised his fist as if to hit me (I was in the front seat) once and grabbed my bag and wouldn't let go once we reached the destination, despite there being 3 other men practically twice his size in the van. I'm not getting into a fistfight with an obviously batshit fucking crazy Vietnamese guy within hours of arriving into the country, not to mention the legal implications that would surely follow, over a fucking dollar. Battles of these sort, unfortunately, were not made to be won by foreigners.

Which brings us to the attitude of the Vietnamese thus far -- That was my first one, and I was clearly not impressed. I had heard from practically every traveler who had ventured here that the Vietnamese were surly "fuck you" people and didn't pander to the tourists for them to spend money, and were more likely to verbally abuse and harass them. While I initially was able to confirm this, everybody else here has been fantastic. The people are super nice, especially the women who are particularly flirty. Vietnamese women, from what i've seen here in Hanoi, are gorgeous. Way cuter than Thai women, whom for the life of me I couldn't see most of them as anything but first, possible whores, and second, possible ladyboys. Thai chicks (with the obvious exceptions in all populations) are just not hot. Vietnamese chicks, however, are fucking banging, and apparently the french dudes and I are meeting some tomorrow night. I may venture to drop my pseudo intellectual superiority in the meatmarket and try to pursue some good-ole-fuckin', especially since I splurged a whole 10 fucking dollars for my room.

Which brings me to money. Southeast asia is so fucking cheap. If I had known my money would go so far, I would have planned a much longer trip. Mostly Europeans here, the USA looks at holidays entirely wrongly (too wrong?). I'd say75% of the travelers I meet are traveling for 6-12 months, on a sabbatical of sorts to celebrate highschool or college. The rest are on summer breaks from uni, or in between jobs. Its amazing that most Americans work their entire lives at bullshit jobs for a meager 2 weeks a year and benefits. Going to be really hard to go back to that after this experience, and my next one.

My next big trip will come next August. I know it's a ways ahead, but i'm already planning it. I won't post it here like I did in my other thread, cause plans can change drastically in a year and I think when they do, it's personally embarrassing. Sorry. I will let you know that unless something drastic happens to return me to the States prematurely (my grandpa died 2 weeks ago, and I didn't return home, so more drastic than that), it will likely be an entire 3+ years before I set foot on U.S. soil again.

What else. I think that's it for now. I've barely slept at all since Friday, so i'm going to crash for, I don't know, forever. Hope you enjoyed the read, fuckheads.