

# Taking Off

Ty F. Clemens

# .

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2013 Ty F. Clemens & Parblished Arfers Parblishing Argency

<http://www.facebook.com/ParblishedArfers>

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First Edition, 2013

New Edition, Better than Bell Biv DeVoe

Published in the United States of America

Consider it copywrote.

# Table of Contents

Prologue

Leaving

Pamplona

Australians

Nice

Brit(ish Islander)s

Munich

Amsterdam

Berlin

Kiwis

Budapest

Budapest to Zagreb

Zagreb

Being American

Rome

Intermission

Mai Chau

Canadians

Hanoi to Hoi An

Tuk Tuks

Siem Reap & Angkor

Bangkok

Monkeys

India

The End

Antilogue

#

This book is dedicated to its career; it doesn't have time for a family right now.

# Prologue

**Travel lust** (Noun)

1. A strong impulse or longing to travel.

2. A strangely acceptable excuse to not have a job.

3. An overwhelming desire to have sex with airplanes. Hot, powerful airplanes.

**See also.** Wanderlust, Hobonomics, Boeingphilia

I've always wanted to travel. When I was in college, I couldn't afford to, and when I got a real job, I didn't have the time. You can relate to not getting everything you want? What are the odds? Fortunately, three years after I joined the corporate world, I took advantage of a little used loophole that guarantees plenty of free time to anyone who quits their job, and I was able to spend the next few months traveling Europe and Asia.

What follows are the memoirs and observations of my trip. Although when I say memoirs, I mean that in the loosest sense—I don't have forced plotlines or unrealistic character growth, just some anecdotes that I hope you'll find entertaining. And as for observations, I just mean anything else I wanted to include but that isn't technically a story. It's really just a collection of accounts that chronicle my knack for getting into memorable situations, my shortcoming of having to make fun of anything that seems strange to me, and more pop culture references than I would have expected when I started writing.

I didn't write this book as a travel guide. I may offer the occasional tip or recommendation, but don't assume that any of them are based on thorough research. I certainly didn't write this as an inspirational piece to encourage you to quit your job and follow your dreams. For all I know you've got kids and a mortgage—dreams aren't as big a deal as we make them out to be, and definitely not as important as keeping the lights on. I really only wrote this because I wanted an email to send to my friends when they asked for a synopsis of my trip, and when I started dividing that email into chapters, I realized it was too long for any of them to ever read. But maybe, unlike my friends, you possess both functional literacy and basic globe comprehension, and you'll be able to appreciate what I've compiled.

But before we get started, let me throw out a couple of disclaimers that I hope will aid in your reading:

.

_I am not an authority whatsoever_ : I did little fact checking in writing this book. I wanted everything to be written from the perspective I had when it happened. Verifying things after the fact ruins that. So if you think to yourself at any point "that doesn't sound right," well then you're a stubborn skeptic and need to learn to trust me based on faith alone. But you're also probably correct. However, regardless of the no-doubt dozens of factual errors that I'm sure this book must contain,

.

_I am not a liar_ :[1] Inaccurate? Probably. But I've done my best to avoid any explicit fiction beyond mild editing for the purposes of narrative. I may have changed a few names for anonymity or taken some liberties for simplicity, but for the most part everything is as I remember it. So while I wouldn't call this book reliable as testimony, I'm confident in saying that it's well over 90% true. That's excluding, of course, the occasional absurd joke, any points of obvious speculation, and all the parts that I've made up entirely.

.

So please read, enjoy, and do your best not to judge me too harshly based on what you infer from these stories alone.

# Leaving

Since this is a book about travelling, I won't waste much time about what I did before my trip, since it consisted, almost entirely, of not travelling. Still, I suppose in a book about a long voyage, it's appropriate to start off in my hometown; or at least my adopted hometown, the place where I moved after college but that I'm kind of indifferent to. Keep in mind that the _specific_ town doesn't really matter; you can imagine anything—from the bustling city life of Richmond, Virginia to the uniform suburbs that surround Richmond, Virginia. It will be fine as long as you're picturing a mid-Atlantic metropolitan area of about 1.2 Million people that for some reason actually takes pride in the fact that it was once the capital of a Confederacy which was founded on the principle of supporting slavery.

In June of 2010, when I make the impromptu decision to leave everything behind and travel, I can't help but smile while thinking about the liberating lifestyle I'm about to embrace. Until I realize that I'm still restrained by the very non-liberating lifestyle which I have not yet given up—I've just renewed the lease on my apartment, I still have some car payments left, and I'm not completely sure if I can afford to leave my job in favor of spending my savings, especially after I find out that if I stop showing up to work, my employer may be reluctant to continue paying me. Spontaneity will have to take a backseat to practicality.

So in June of 2011, when I have had an appropriate amount of time to prepare to travel, I continue with the plan. Telling my parents about my decision could have been tough, but by doing something as simple as lying about a new high-paying job that requires me to go overseas, they're actually happy for me. I don't even bother telling my girlfriend, since I don't need another lecture on "how we're not still together."[2] And once my personal life is sorted out, the only thing left to do is quit my job.

.

I've gotten along with every boss I've ever had in my life, from my first job in high school to every manager I've had while working for the faceless corporation where I'm currently employed. So I had never understood the stereotype of hating your boss, until four months before I leave this job, when I meet my new manager, Dan.

To be clear on the timeline, I have already decided to quit before I meet Dan, and am only still working for these last few months to collect a few more paychecks and steal a few more boxes of pens. And to be fair, since I'm planning to walk out the door anyway, I'm not exactly the best employee to begin with. But Dan is everything that's wrong with the corporate world, from Bill Lumbergh to the Pointy Haired Boss, wrapped up in a middle-aged, pudgy package that loves to use the term "value-add," but never in the right context. Having to be around him every single day just makes me that much more excited about leaving.

"Hey Dan," I say when I walk past his desk, "I need to speak to you when you get a chance."

Nineteen seconds later we're sitting across from each other in a small meeting room. Dan doesn't have a secretary, but anything you say to him outside of a meeting room he will treat as if it's been relayed to him by one. He confirms what I'd just told him a moment ago.

"You wanted to speak with me?"

"Yeah, I need to tell you that I'm leaving the company," I say as I hand him my resignation, "Here's my two weeks notice. It's been a good few years, and this place has been great to me, but it's—"

"I'm sorry to hear that," he interrupts smoothly and calmly, as if he's been expecting this, "it's been great having you on the team."

I crack a smile at the insincerity of his words. He doesn't like me any more than I like him. There's blame on both sides, but there is no question that we are not a good match. I do things like purposefully trip him up when I catch him lying to clients, and he always gets on my nerves by expecting me to complete the work I'm responsible for; and on time no less. Hell, except for my salary, medical benefits, comfortable working conditions, paid leave, free pens, and the ability to walk away whenever I want, I'm basically his slave.[3] And now we're both just happy to be done with one another.

"So what are you doing next?" He asks, condescendingly rattling off where he thinks I could be going, "A hot new startup? Grad school? Starting your own business?"

"I'm actually going to travel. My flight to Europe leaves two weeks from tomorrow," I answer.

"Oh... uh," he tries say something, but he seems a bit flustered, clearly not expecting me to give that response. His demeanor lightens a little bit and he surprises me with an anecdote, "I actually spent about a month travelling after college. Backpacked around France and Spain before I came home for a job."

He's dropped his usual, fast-paced business persona in favor of a more relaxed attitude. His hair, which is normally in a combover that resembles soft serve ice cream the way it swirls around his head, is now beginning to unravel like yarn. He's almost always quick to fix it, but right now it doesn't even faze him. It's the most genuine I've ever seen him.

"I really loved it," He continues, "and even now, when I think about it, I wish I could have had some more time. I always told myself I'd go back and see more..."

I think I feel a brief sense of schadenfreude, but I'm not sure, because I don't speak German.

"I started the job," he continues, "then I bought a car. Married my girlfriend. Got a mortgage. Had kids. Now the kids are almost old enough to go travel themselves..."

He takes a pause, not more than a few seconds, but enough for him to realize he's been contemplating for too long. He looks up at me and decides it best to finish the conversation.

"You're making the right choice," he tells me.

I'm not certain if this is a sincere attempt at reassuring me, or if, considering that Dan hates me, he's working the long con, and trying to make sure I don't chicken out of the biggest mistake of my life. Dan's kind of a prick like that.

.

Fifteen days later, I arrive at the international airport nearest to Richmond, Virginia. I'm carrying a 60 liter backpack, which contains, among other things, 3 changes of clothes, a 10" laptop, a small daypack, and a Eurail pass, which will allow me to ride on almost any train in Europe. I've also got a companion, at least for a little while; standing next to me is one of my best friends since high school, Alec. He's taken a couple weeks off of work to join me for the first part of my trip. His only condition for joining me is that as soon as we get to Europe, we have to go to Pamplona and run with the bulls.

# Pamplona

I know, it's kind of cliché to kick off a trip to Europe by running with the bulls. And for the purposes of this book, I would have much rather started with something else; maybe a seemingly innocuous experience that turns out to be prophetic or symbolic by the third act. But I don't have one of those experiences, or if I do, it's so innocuous that I don't remember it. All I can offer are the relevant facts: Alec and I arrive in Pamplona, intent on running with the bulls.

The Basics

_Language:_ I speak Spanish relatively well. That is, relative to the thousands of languages I don't speak at all. Unfortunately, Spain has five official languages, and four of them are something other than Spanish. The people of Pamplona, specifically, speak Basque. This makes my bilingualism obsolete, as I discover that speaking my intermediate-level, Mexican-dialect, American-accented Spanish is only slightly more productive than grunting, and still much less useful than shouting in English.[4]

The Festival

The week long festival of San Fermin, which roughly translates to "covered in urine" (something to remember every time you see the *asterisk* symbol), is an all day, all night party. There is a gigantic influx of people, totaling over a million throughout the week. The streets are filled, every bar and restaurant is packed, and anything that isn't usually a bar or restaurant has been converted to a bar or souvenir shop. Fortunately the town is well prepared for these extra people. They set up five portable bathroom trailers; each trailer has four stalls for the ladies, four for the gentleman, and a five-person urinal trough around the side.

Wait, what? They've only got 65 toilets for a million people*?

It gets better though. Those stalls only have squat toilets, which are literally just holes in the floor; and those squat toilets don't have toilet paper, so now the ladies have even less incentive to use them. Fortunately though, the town* relaxes some of the more antiquated laws for the festival, and temporarily allows anything with walls to be classified as a urinal. Take that, millennia old Roman ruins*. Top it all off with a notable absence of trash cans, and the fact that thousands of people are consuming food and alcohol in the streets, and the ground soon becomes a sludge of ammonia-scented garbage. I'm not saying the festival isn't a good time; in fact, it's one hell of a party, but it is, at best, absolutely disgusting. Attending San Fermin is like having sex with a super model in a port-a-potty—if you ever get the opportunity, of course you're going to do it, but you need to accept that some levels of filth can't be washed away no matter how hard you scrub.

The Run

I think I can confidently say that running with the bulls is one of the stupidest things I've ever done in my life. The bull run is one of those universal bucket list things, up there with skydiving and hunting a man. It's a little dangerous, but not _too_ dangerous. It's guaranteed excitement, and something that almost everyone knows about. It's everything you need for a good story and bragging rights for the rest of your life. Unfortunately, those are the only arguments in favor of doing the run. The reasons against doing it are nearly endless. Besides the disaster of an event that is San Fermin, and everything you need to go through to just be in attendance, the run itself is not something anyone should ever take part in.

.

The Running of the Bulls starts promptly at 8:00 am, but the city closes off all entrance points for the run at 7:00, so Alec and I are up by 6:30, we stumble through the crowds as we fight our Kalimotxo hangovers, and are at the starting point by 6:55. At 7:00 the fences around the route are put up, and all the gates are closed shut. I get my first jolt of "this is actually happening." And then I wait.

This is not a fun wait. I have a the nervous feeling you get in your gut right before you give a speech, combined with the fear of imminent pain you have when you sit down in a dentist's chair. And for the next hour I can do nothing but stand and stew in my own anxiety, surrounded by a couple thousand other people, standing and stewing in their own anxiety. So I do what anyone would, and make conversation with strangers to put my fears in the back of my mind. I have never met so many people as quickly as I do right now. In just a couple of minutes my small talk with Alec grows into small talk with a dozen people, all of us as nervous as the next.

"Did you hear about the guy who got gored the other day? He's still in intensive care."

"Yeah. And I met someone who got trampled yesterday. Broke his arm and a few toes, got some stitches across his face. Had to cut his holiday short, he's flying home to England tomorrow."

Everyone's mind is focused on the run, so even though we're all talking to distract ourselves, the conversation stays on the one thing we don't want to think about. I truly believe I'd be more comfortable talking about the night of my own conception than talking about the bulls, but we just can't seem to change the topic. Fortunately, an Aussie that joins our group had run the day before, and he is able to give us some perspective.

"You never realize just how big a bull is until they're charging at you. One thousand kilos and a pair of horns running scared, not caring if it crushes you under its hooves. If you're ever in doubt, just get out of the way. 'Cuz if you get hit in the wrong spot you'll be paralyzed or dead in a second."

Why would you tell me that? I already knew that, but why the hell would you tell me that?

This Aussie is saying all the wrong things, but I'm still hanging onto his every word.

"And if you make it to the stadium," he says, "make sure not to get caught touching the bulls."

.

I should probably explain some details about the Running of the Bulls. The run happens once every morning for eight straight days during the Festival of San Fermin, and it's the precursor for each evening's bullfights in the city stadium. At 8:00 am a rocket is set off and the twelve bulls that will be fighting that night are released from their overnight pen. They run through the center of town on a fenced-off path, the path where I'm currently standing, until they reach the bullring at the city stadium about a half mile away. Once the last bull reaches its destination, the entrance to the ring is shut, and the bulls are collected into a new pen at the stadium. But, if you can make it to the stadium before the last bull does, you can enter the bullring, and be present as the rest of the bulls run through and are collected into their new pen. And after the last bull is collected, they will be released back into the ring one at a time, where they'll run amok, charging the people who were dumb enough to enter. This part is probably way more dangerous than the actual run. And the only real rule in that pit of horror is a bit of an ironic one: "Don't touch the bulls."

.

"Don't touch the bulls? Why not?" I ask the Aussie.

"It's illegal. They don't want anyone hurting the entertainment. The cops are serious about it. I reached out and touched one of the bulls on his back yesterday, and a cop standing just outside of the ring grabbed me and arrested me. Got a €400 fine. Spent the night in jail. Just got out a couple hours ago."

It's like a strip club. The bulls can touch you all they want. They can charge you, gore you, and trample you.[5] But it's illegal for you to reach out and touch them. You have fewer rights than the bulls.

The nervous conversation keeps up for a while. The balconies above the street start filling in with spectators. We notice pretty quickly that almost everyone waiting to run speaks English as a first language. The population of the Festival is probably 80% native Spaniards, but 90% of the people actually running with the bulls are foreigners. It's kind of sick; the whole thing is a celebration of tricking tourists into getting trampled. It's just about the closest thing to gladiatorial games that we have left. I can't really blame the locals though, it's great for their economy and all of us foreigners actually want to do it. Locals just have the advantage of knowing how bad of an idea it is.

Every five or ten minutes we see a group of cops marching a line of people out of the crowd. Anyone noticeably drunk or wearing flip flops is kicked out, since the city wants to be responsible about the impending bloodbath, and the cops make up excuses to kick out most of the women. Every time the police walk by, we all stare down at the ground. None of us are drunk, all of us are wearing shoes, but no one wants to be the guy who traveled across the planet to get thrown out of the bull run.

We are all corralled near the start of the path, but as it nears 8:00 we're allowed to spread out further down the length of the route and closer to the stadium. I had heard that the most dangerous part of the path is a sharp right turn about halfway through; people get jammed up as they try to turn the corner, and the bulls plow right through anyone caught in the traffic. That is the one place I don't want to get stuck, and one of the guys in our circle of nervous banter, a Canadian named Scott, agrees. So the two of us separate from Alec and the rest of the group, walk down the path, about 50 yards past the 90° turn, and we continue to wait.

"Are you going to try to make it to the stadium?" he asks.

"I'm going to try, but I don't know if I'll make it in time."

"Same here. I guess we can stick together then," he suggests.

We have about 10 more minutes to wait, and the uneasiness only builds. We continue having empty conversation with more people just as nervous as us. Every single person standing on that course is out of their element. At 7:55 the cops start climbing over the fences to get out of harm's way.[6] The only people left on the entire stretch of road are terrified participants.

When the run is about to kick off, we begin to guess how far we are from the starting point, and estimate that it's probably about a quarter mile, which means we're also about a quarter mile from the stadium.

How long does it take for a bull to run a quarter mile? Hell, how long does it take me to run a quarter mile?

The talking dwindles. We're all just staring at our watches.

7:58.

7:59.

8:00.

It's time. We brace for the rocket to signify the start of the run.

Boom.

It's started. This is real. What the hell am I doing?

It seems like other people share the same thoughts. A few people take off running, but most of us wait. We stare back down the street toward the sharp turn. Something we didn't realize beforehand is that by standing just 50 yards around a blind corner we can't see anything that's happening, or more importantly anything that might be coming until it's already pretty close.

How far away are the bulls? Should I have started running already?

People start to trickle around the corner, some running, some just a lazy jog. At first just a few here and there. But after about 30 seconds the flow starts to pick up. Less and less jogging, more and more running. In what seems like an eternity, but really may have been less than a minute, people are now flooding around the corner.

Are the bulls close? How will I know?

And then I see it, something I won't forget for the rest of my life. A man rounds the corner, and he's sprinting. But more important than his speed is his face. He has the look of absolute fear. Every single ounce of me knows there is a bull chasing this man. And before I can even react, I am proven right. A bull flies around the corner, not losing a step of momentum. Four more bulls follow right behind him, and come charging toward us. That's when it all kind of clicks.

This is a stampede. I am looking at a stampede.

I'm standing toward one side of the path as that stampede approaches, but I force myself to sprint out into the center of the street so I can join it. I get alongside the back three bulls, less than an arm's length away. The exhilaration is probably intense, but all I can focus on is the fear.

Oh Shit. Shit. Shit. WhatTheFuckAmIDoing? Shitshitshit.

The fear is justified. The sentiment of the panicked crowd of people has gone from camaraderie to every-man-for-himself. Any illusion of trying to stick with Scott is gone. I am absolutely terrified, running with a crowd of equally terrified peers. But within only a couple of seconds the herd passes us, since it turns out that people can't move as quickly as a group of charging bulls. I am still running, though, because I'm still in a thick churn of other runners, and I can't stop even if I want to. I look around for Scott but I don't see him. And then I bring my focus back to the more imminent concern.

Is that it? I thought there were twelve bulls. There were only five there.

And that's why we're still running. I'm no mathematician, but twelve minus five has got to be at least six, and all those bulls are still behind us. I jerk my head around. I don't see any bulls. They aren't right behind us. We all keep running. I turn my head again. One more bull is coming up on us, but it passes at least 10 feet to my right with a clear path all around it. I turn my head a few seconds later and see three or four more bulls about 200 yards behind us, not far past the curve _._ They are definitely running, and quickly, but not a blazing speed like the first six. I'm forced to keep moving. I still have plenty of adrenaline pumping through me, but I'm not panicking. And then I see a body lying on the ground.

One of the bad things about almost every single person on this path being a white male between 21 and 35, all of whom are wearing the exact same traditional San Fermin outfit of white shirt and white pants*, is that anyone with short, brown hair sort of resembles my buddy Alec. I try to look at the face on the body to verify, but it's covered with blood. I don't remember Alec's face being covered with blood before the run, but I am still a little concerned that my dead friend could be lying right in front of me. Until a moment later when the guy on the ground lifts his head up to look around.

Not dead!

His face is so beat up that whoever he is, even his mother wouldn't recognize him. He's clearly been trampled, either by bulls or by other runners. I want to help pull him off to the side, but there is no way I can stop with the hordes of people all around me running full speed from some charging bulls. If I try to slow down I'll just end up trampled on the ground with him. And then I notice the guy has a tattoo on his arm that I've never seen before.

Not Alec!

I'm glad that it's not my friend on the ground, and equally glad that I won't have to figure out how to FedEx his corpse back to the States, but I can't say I'm calmed, since I'm still looking at a trampled person lying almost motionless in front of me. But despite the reality of the danger I'm facing, I manage to keep my cool. I run past the guy on the ground, and everyone else seems to avoid stepping on him, too, so I take a little bit of comfort from the fact that he's not still being trampled.

A few seconds later I am able to make it out of the current of people and stand against a fence to catch my breath. I look back at the body, and notice that some people are pulling him off to the side of the path. I see about a dozen paramedics jump over a fence near the sharp turn and begin running up the street, one or two breaking off from the group whenever they pass an injury. Then those three bulls I had seen earlier come running past me and I pull back closer to the fence.

This whole time I have been either looking behind me or less than 15 feet in front of me. But now that I'm off to the side, I take a moment to glance further up the street. The stadium is only about 100 yards away. There are still three more bulls out there, only two have made it around the corner, and they're still almost a quarter mile behind me. I realize that I can probably get to the stadium before they close the gates. I sprint, trying to make it to the bullring before the last bull does. I get closer and closer, turning my head every three seconds to make sure that no bulls have caught up. The entrance to the bullring is wide open, and I bolt through.

I am standing in the bullring, which is about 40 or 50 yards in diameter, with a few hundred fellow runners. Every seat, aisle, and staircase in the stadium is completely full with onlookers. Everyone, runners and spectators alike, are all watching the Jumbotron, where they are showing that one of the three remaining bulls had been turned around and was going in the wrong direction, and now the bull handlers are trying to straighten him out and get him to the stadium. I sigh with relief that I have a respite from danger. I walk near the entrance of the ring to take a quick look out, and the two bulls I'd seen earlier come charging through.

Oh, shit. I forgot about them.

I move out of the way as quickly as possible, and they run into their pen on the other side of the ring. I continue watching the Jumbotron, waiting for the last bull to show up, when Scott walks past me. He has blood on his shoulder.

"Did you get hit by a bull?!" I ask him excitedly. Not because I am excited to see blood, but because I have more adrenaline in my veins than if I'd just been stuck with an epipen. I'll be excited for the next week.

"You didn't see it?!" he asks back.

"See what?"

"When we all took off running! I was right behind you and there was another guy right next to me. He got nailed in the arm with a horn and his blood got on me. How did you miss it?"

As if I haven't been scared enough, Scott reiterates how close to disaster I had just come.

Seconds later the last bull runs into the ring and straight to its pen. The audience cheers and the run is over. Now comes the dangerous part.

A gate opens, and a smaller bull, maybe just a cow with horns, but still big enough to induce plenty of fear, comes charging through the crowd. I am clumped up with hundreds of panicked people. I have no control over where I go, but on the bright side, I have a solid 10-person-deep shield to protect me from any bull attacks. People start jumping over the security wall that surrounds the ring—it's a 4-foot-tall wooden fence where runners can be safe from the bulls. But where's the fun in that?

Whenever one bull gets tired, the handlers take it out and replace it with another. The whole "don't touch the bulls" rule is largely ignored as people continually test their stupidity by running up behind the bulls to touch their backs. I even see one daring fellow use a bull as a pommel horse. He pulls it off well, although I'm not sure how the guy manages to stick the landing without tripping over his gigantic balls.

Typically, whenever a bull charges the crowd, everyone is able to get out of the way. But every now and then a bull singles someone out and drives him to the ground, attacking him until it gets bored playing with its toy or until enough people manage to distract it away. The scariest moment of the entire event, and quite possibly the scariest moment of my entire life, comes when I am (somewhat imprudently) sneaking up on a bull to touch its back. It turns around, sees me, and begins to charge.

I follow suit by turning around and charging away from the bull. I'm near the center of the ring, and I have a clear lane to the security wall about 25 yards away. My pace can really only be described as a desperate sprint. I'd like to think that if my path were filled with children and old ladies, I wouldn't knock them over and leave them for dead in my wake, but I can't promise that. I'm not trying to stay calm, I'm not worried about how to best take a hit from the bull, I'm only concerned with reaching that wall and jumping over it. I don't know if time slows down, exactly, but the distance between me and the wall just isn't shrinking as quickly as I would like it to, but that's probably because I'm so scared that anything slower than "immediately" is too long. Even though it can't take me more than three or four seconds to reach the wall, I know how much slower I am than a bull, and know it can't be far behind me. So when my hands grip the wall and I ready myself to jump over, I turn my head to see how much distance is left between the bull and my fragile, easily impale-able body.

About 20 yards, give or take. The bull was probably only charging me for about a half second before it got distracted by one of the hundreds of other people in the ring. It's actually a little narcissistic to think that it would only be interested in harming me when it has so many other potential victims. Regardless, I don't regret running like a little girl. Not in the least.

After a few more stupid brushes with danger I've had my fill. I jump over the security wall for good and wait until the event is over. I leave the ring and meet up with Alec. The stadium empties and the fences around the running route come down. The festival picks back up as families begin their day, late-night partiers go to bed, and runners head to fast food joints to satiate their sudden cravings for beef.

The entire event is a massive clusterfuck. It's a combination of tourists who don't know what they're getting into, locals who cheer for blood and injuries, and animals that are exploited and terrified before being cruelly slaughtered for entertainment that evening. But it's also, unfortunately, one of the coolest things you could ever do, which should at least help to offset some of the drawbacks.

# Australians

Mimicking their not-so-indigenous cane toad, Australians are everywhere. You can find them in every hostel, guest house, and tour group across Europe and Asia. And they're all heading toward or coming back from Great Britain. There must be a hundred thousand 20-something Australians out there who are leaving their island where everyone speaks English, spending three months slowly meandering to London, spending a year or two on an island where everyone speaks English, and then spending another three months going back to Australia.

I'm not completely sure what causes Australians to travel in such massive numbers. They've got about 2/3 the population of Canada, 1/3 the population of the UK, and 1⁄15 the population of the US, but they're better represented as travelers than any of those countries. On the surface it doesn't make any sense. But I think I've got a decent theory to explain it.

The means is the easy part. Australians have a ton of money. Their resource-based economy makes them near impervious to any economic downswings that may affect the rest of the world. On top of that, their incredibly generous minimum wage laws mean that everyone gets a piece of that strong economy. It results in a population with almost everyone working and making at least the equivalent of $40,000 US a year. Getting the funds to travel isn't really a problem for Australians. The bigger question is: why do they want to travel?

Because Australia is fucking terrible. Admittedly I've never been to Australia, so I guess I'm not the best authority here, but from what I know, and from what I've learned from Australians themselves, it's the only thing that makes sense.

First of all, the country is filled with monsters. That's undeniable. Almost everywhere on Earth, we make up myths of dangerous creatures to scare the shit out of kids and tourists: El Chupacabra, Yetis, The Loch Ness Monster, Jackalopes, the list goes on. Australia doesn't have any of those myths. There's no need when the country and its waters are packed with the largest crocodiles in the world, 10-inch spiders, great white sharks, dropbears, venomous snakes, and killer jellyfish. All they need are a few clowns and a repressed memory of my uncle to truly be the living embodiment of my nightmares. But maybe Australia has some redeeming qualities? Nope. The tales I hear from Australians themselves don't make the place sound any better.

Australians may have a lot of money, but they need it. Their country is one of the most expensive places on Earth. It makes sense; their high taxes and high minimum wage are going to be reflected in their prices. In Australia you're going to pay at least $100 for a pair of Levi's, computer and electronics prices are double that of the States, and the cost of hiring a Mexican day-laborer is astronomical. The really confusing part, though, is the high price of alcohol. The Australian stereotype is the hard living, hard drinking bushman. But because of their taxes, they have the most expensive booze in the world, and their cheapest six pack of beer is going to run you more than $15. So their only practical options for drinking are to buy boxed wine or make toilet-rum. The thought of Paul Hogan drinking Franzia does seem almost blasphemous, but high prices aren't the end of the world. There has to be something else about Australia. And there is: it's full of Australians.

The one thing that every Australian has promised me is that I would hate Australians. At first I found it hard to believe, since I've got on great with almost every Australian I've met. So well that they even have me saying "got on great." But they've assured me that the ones that travel are a different breed than your standard stay-at-home Australian. The traveling types are a little more friendly to other cultures, a little more educated, and not completely inbred. I've been told that when you actually get down there, your average Australian is going to be an under-educated, racist, nationalist redneck. Kind of like the stereotypical conservative Texan, except they don't just hate people who don't speak English, they hate anyone who doesn't speak English in their accent. I'm a little skeptical of whether or not any of that's actually true, but it fits the narrative so I'm accepting it.

It all results in Australians leaving their homeland to make a new life in England. At least until they realize that the rest of the world doesn't value a Burger King cashier to be worth $19/hour, London is every bit as expensive as Sydney, and the weather in Great Britain almost makes a vicious koala attack seem pleasant.

# Nice

Alec and I decide that Nice, France will be a good halfway point between Spain and Germany. Please consult a map and an understanding of how trains work to see why we are incorrect.

The Basics

_Getting There_ : French trains are often expensive, usually dirty, and always behind schedule. Thus, French trains are an excellent way to get accustomed to everything else in France.

_Monaco_ : Does living out of a backpack or suitcase not make you feel like enough of a filthy drifter? Try taking a daytrip to the nearby micronation of Monaco. If you don't have a nice suit to wear, you can still have a good time watching people who do have nice suits be admitted into buildings that you're expected to stay a safe distance away from. Seriously, you'll have to leave. You're scaring the money.

The Beach

Nice is a beach city. The difference between it and most other beach cities is that some genius said, "Hey, let's get rid of all the sand and replace it with rocks." Although to be fair, despite the fact that lying on rocks is about as comfortable as lying on rocks, it was kind of genius, because you're not covered with sand after you come back from the beach. But regardless of this innovation, I am still firmly on record as hating the ocean, or the "sea," as they insist on calling it around the Mediterranean. It's mostly full of sharks, and what isn't full of sharks is full of giant squids, incidental drownings, and potential sharks.

But alligators or not, I've got a few nights to spend in this city. And there is some good news: I'm staying at a hostel at the beach. Which is, of course, filled with other twenty-somethings, all of whom also hate the beach.

Wait, why do we all keep falling for this beach hoax? Air conditioning's been around for decades now. We have no need to gather around the beach to cool down in the summer anymore. And I refuse to believe that it's to see scantily clad girls. We live in the age of the internet and the laxest attitudes toward sex in 2,000 years. Bikinis will always be appreciated, but they're not worth this much trouble. Nice, France, like all beach towns that have not begun to legalize certain vices,[7] has effectively become obsolete.

Potent Potables

Alec and I get into our hostel later than we'd like, because, and here's a shocker, our French train was several hours behind schedule. It's 8:00 pm. We pick up a bottle of red wine from a bodega next to our hostel, and get some food from a kebab shop up the street. The kebabs are almost immediately gone, and we're drinking the wine on the hostel's back patio, when in just minutes, I am explaining the intricacies of marijuana policy in the US to a couple of Swedish and Canadian guys. I realize that I'm more fascinated with the possible relaxation of Federal powers by the Justice Department, whereas these two are more concerned with their upcoming trip to California. Regardless, within a few minutes, they predictably ask me if I'd like to smoke "a bit of hash" with them. I decline, but am then invited to join them in some drinking games with their friends. And so begins a night of drinking like I'm in college again.

-A Necessary Digression on French Alcohol-

When I say "drinking like I'm in college," I don't mean drinking a lot. Although clearly one drinks less after graduating, I was never a huge drinker in college, and I have still had big nights out since leaving school. The big change between graduation and the work force was a disposable income. I did not drink significantly less after college, but I did drink significantly better. Kegs of Busch Lite became kegs of Yuengling, Yuengling with dinner became fancy microbrews, and rail liquors at the bar became a step above rail liquors to give the illusion that I'm not an unrefined barbarian who will imbibe paint thinner as long as it's mixed with Diet Coke. But in Nice, France, there are no microbrews, no Sam Adams, there aren't even any Budweisers. There's just nasty wine, the liquor that's available, and worst of all, shitty French beer.

"Nasty" wine is a bit confusing when referring to France, but let me explain. There is good French wine. So good, in fact, that I cannot fully appreciate it, and won't be paying the ridiculous amount of money that is demanded for it. And the drop-off in quality among French wines is steep. Because of this, there is no Yellow Tail or Charles Shaw of the French world: a drinkable, though certainly not sophisticated bottle of wine that costs less than €10. So we're stuck with €3 garbage wines. That's fine.

Liquor, although I'm sure it exists somewhere, is not easily found by us. The only place that seems to sell it during the hours that we want it is the bodega next door to our hostel. It is strictly bodega-quality liquor, with a limited bodega selection.

And then there's the beer. As far as French beer goes, just imagine that it's all made by Anheuser-Busch's _Natural_ product line, and then rebranded for a French market. Let's take a look at a few of our options:

.

Kronenbourg: A variety of beers under the same umbrella with different names, but all the same generic bad beer taste.

Desperado: Sort of like an assier version of Corona, but with a shot of tequila mixed in.

Maximator: 11.6% ABV beer; Colt 45 for a less refined clientele.

.

In fact, of all the beers we try, we find only one glimmer of hope at the supermarket, the last beer we come across: _Jamiroquai_. Spelled and pronounced exactly like the one-hit-wonder, mid-nineties funk quintet of the same name. And the moniker is not the result of a happy coincidence in French translation; the band Jamiroquai endorses the drink.

I cannot tell you how much I want to like this beer. Here I am, looking at half a dozen others we've already tasted that are pretty terrible, and I see a beer named after a band that had its big hit in 1996. Put another way, _Virtual Insanity_ 's release date is as close to the Carter administration as it is to present day. But for some reason, this band, not even a French band, has an endorsement deal with one of the only beer companies in the country. If this stuff is good, it can redeem every other brew that we've tried, and that alone has me so excited that I'm ready to drink Jamiroquai until the floor starts moving. So we buy a couple of warm six packs and put them in the refrigerator for a few hours. When the time is right, we run to the fridge like kids on Christmas. We each open a can, toast for good fortune, and take a gulp. But like every other present Santa delivers, it smells suspiciously like malt liquor, and like ever other beer in France, it tastes awful. This is some Jamirobullshit.

-Back to the Hostel-

We go inside with our new friends and sit down at a table, jam-packed with about a dozen Australians, Canadians, Americans, and Swedes.[8] Before I can ask what game we're playing I see a deck of cards being opened and spread around a Tupperware container.

Shit.

For those not familiar with the game of King's Cup, there are plenty of variations, but to summarize, players take turns drawing cards, and each card drawn indicates that either a certain person or persons must drink, or that a mini drinking game must be played. Additionally, throughout the game, players are occasionally enticed to pour some or all of their drink into a cup (or in our case, a Tupperware bowl) in the middle of the table, and the person to draw the final King from the deck has the responsibility to drink the contents of the "King's Cup." (Get it? That's the pun.)

Do people just need to recreate the feeling one gets from Russian Roulette? Isn't that why we invented regular roulette? And then replaced it with craps because it's more fun?

Do not play drinking games with strangers. Everyone at this table knows the one person they came with, but has known no one else longer than an hour, and without fear of repercussion, there is no mercy. Waterfalls are emptying out half-liter cans. The thumb master has gone drunk with power. And also gone actually drunk. I think one of the rules is "no blinking allowed above the waist." And then there's the container in the center: a concoction of all the horrible French drinks I've described above. It holds what seems to be liters of warm, disgusting beer, a hearty bit of red wine bordering on vinegar, and a few shots of vodka that must have been rejected from a rubbing alcohol factory due to poor quality. It's my turn, and there's only one King left in the deck.

I take that turn like I'm Christopher Walken in the _Deer Hunter_. I stare down the options, and reluctantly, almost with tears in my eye, flip a card. I am not as fortunate as Mr. Walken, however, as the chamber doesn't click empty. It's a King. This would be a good time for Alec to pull a Robert De Niro and get me out of there, but I have no such luck (since _somebody_ doesn't want to "murder our new friends"). I have no choice but to pick up the Tupperware container and I drink it down like a man. A sad, whimpering man.

I planned to go to France for the food. I should have known better than to go to a touristy beach town to get an appreciation for that. It's better to stick to big cities that have well reputed restaurants and the small towns where they actually slaughter the chipmunks. I do, however, get the full experience of the alcohol a country has to offer in only a few seconds. And if you, too, want to learn how a community's broke teenagers spend their Saturday nights, I have no better suggestion than some sociopathic strangers, a deck of cards, and some beer endorsed by Harvey Danger.

# Brit(ish Islander)s

If England had remained an oppressive empire, this bit would be a lot simpler.

The English

Unless you're traveling to London, you're going to meet full-blooded Englishmen just about anywhere you go. They have a fairly understandable accent, but they use a different vocabulary. It's never words you won't know, just words that have been abandoned by the past couple of generations of Americans. They really do love their tea, and the stereotype of politeness usually holds up, too. Talking to an English person is kind of like visiting your grandparents in that regard. Even down to the need to barrage you with questions.

The difference is that grandparents tend to ask about your grades and why you're such a sissy. But English people, especially English women, need to quiz you on your knowledge of English society. Not as a test to see whether or not you're culturally ignorant, just honest curiosity to see what other countries know about England. Do you follow our football? Have you ever heard about Essex girls? Do you know anything about Pippa? I actually think it's kind of cool that I can accurately answer a whole slew of questions with just the word "no." But besides that, every time I speak to an English girl I learn something new about England. Politics, recent changes in social standards, the economic impacts of never adopting the Euro, it's all very boring stuff. They know damn well that we're only interested in finding out where they hide the dragons, but they never let anything slip until you've bought them a couple of pints.[9]

Scots

If there's one thing I can say for certain about the Scottish, it's that they're pretty level headed and forgiving when you associate them with the English. Just kidding. They're hyper-vigilant about their national identity, even past the point of logic.

"So Scotland's in Great Britain, right?"

"Aye."

"Which is part of the British isles?"

"Aye."

"So that would make you British, right?"

"You havin' a loff? 'Course I'm not fookin' Bri'ish. I'm Sco'ish. It's its own fookin' sovereign country."

Beside the fact that apparently no Scotsman understands what the word "sovereign" means,[10] they've gone overboard in defense of their nationality against the English. It's like someone from Milwaukee getting upset because they've been called American.

"American? Arizona's in America. And I ain't no Arizonan! I'm from Wisconsin!"

"But Wisconsin is part of America, right?"

"You just don't get it!" They'd scream.

And they'd be right.

Scots get pissed off when I don't specify what part of an island they're from, but at the same time have no problem just assuming that I'm Canadian.

The Welsh

I've heard a lot about the Welsh, but it's almost all second hand, and for some reason almost all of it has to do with having sex with sheep, which brings me to the bigger point: Why is it that sheep-shagging has become such a common insult in Anglo-Saxon culture? The English say it about Wales, the Americans say it about West Virginia[11], and the Australians say it about New Zealand. I'm beginning to think everyone with a bit of British ancestry has a subconscious urge to bang sheep, and all of us claiming that someone else does it is our communal way of testing the waters to see if anybody's cool with it. So stop tiptoeing around it, and go ahead and fuck a sheep. It can't be all bad; they've been doing it in Tennessee for years.

Anyway, back to Welsh people. I think I've only ever met one. Extrapolating from that, I can assume that everyone from Wales is a 25-year-old male from Cardiff who's working towards his master's degree in engineering.

The Irish

Now admittedly, the Irish do have a legitimate reason for not wanting to be grouped in with the UK, what with them not being a part of the UK. Except Northern Ireland, which is part of the island Ireland but not part of the country Ireland because it is part of the UK. And all of Ireland is still technically part of the British Isles, and therefore I think it's a modest proposal to be able to refer to the Irish as "British," even though every single Irish and English person would probably disagree with me. It's not complicated from a geographical or political standpoint, but when you're trying to stereotype an entire group of people solely for the purpose of clowning on them, it's a lot easier if there are firm and simple boundaries.

I should clarify by saying I'm Irish. I mean, I'm not from Ireland or anything, so I'm not actually Irish, but I'm Irish in lineage. Well, part Irish. I think. My mother's maiden name is definitely Irish; although I think she's actually half German. I'm really just a mutt, but I have a red patch in my facial hair and I'd probably starve too if my livelihood depended on growing potatoes, so I'm Irish enough. And that heritage should give me a free pass on whatever I say about the Irish, since this will be the closest I'll ever get to claiming an ethnicity. But what a crappy ethnicity to claim. Not because there's anything wrong with the Irish, it's a bit of the opposite. There's nothing I can really make fun of.

Stereotypes typical of the Irish need not apply. Some of the Irish people I've met drink a lot, some don't. They're of very little help catching leprechauns, mostly due to their REPEATED REFUSAL TO HELP ME LOOK FOR LEPRECHAUNS. Their accent is a little unique, it sounds like a British person who's been sucking on helium, but if you tell that to the Irish they'll get angry, like a Scot who's been sucking on helium. The only constant I've found in the Irish is their religion. Every Irish person I've met is certain they're Catholic, though they're not necessarily certain about abstaining from sex, going to church, respecting the Pope's authority, or believing in God.

Although when I say it like that, I guess that sums up just about all the Catholics I know.

# Munich

Be careful stepping off the train and proclaiming, " _Ich bin ein Municher_." The locals may appreciate your intent, but taking the literal translation, you've just predicted that you'll be assassinated by the end of the calendar year.

The Basics

_Getting Around_ : You know the glowing red hand that you see at crosswalks? In Munich, when that hand shows up, nobody will cross the street until it goes away. It's the damndest thing, which I can only assume has its roots in some ancient Bavarian superstition.[12] And the waste of time only seems further out of place when you consider that Germans are usually so efficient. But I guess this is the kind of blind obedience that allowed the cold regime of the Merkel to take power.

_Food:_ Munich is home to a surprisingly popular American-themed restaurant. It's everything you could hope for: Paper mache Blues Brothers statues, American sports on TV, and a wall mural reading: _Chicago | Los Angeles | New York | Sydney_.[13] I just hope you like room-temperature, day old hamburgers served on ciabatta bread, because as far as American food goes, the only thing about this restaurant that even resembles the States is the fact that no one in the kitchen is going to be speaking English.

Patriotism Does Wonders for a Sore Throat

Alec and I escape France, but the night before we leave, we both contract a deadly strain of Europox, or potentially something much less serious and slightly less made up. We board a train for Munich in the early stages of a cold, and by the time we are at our new hostel, we are full-on sick. "Unfortunate" seems to be the only word I can think of for arriving at the beer capital of the world and not really wanting to drink. So, when we get to Munich, we drop our bags off at the hostel, meet up with some friends we had met earlier in the trip, and make our way to go drink.

In my experience of all things foreign, I can personally attest to the fact that most of Europe is bullshit. Europeans take something normal, make it weird, change the color, and charge double. German Beer Gardens, though? We need to import those. Big bars with big tables where they serve big beers. Good beers. The kind of beer where, even though you're sick, a liter still seems only just big enough. The only problem you'll really encounter are the terrible beer pours. Germans, as well as the Dutch and most other mainlanders, insist that beer stays fresher for longer with a healthy head, and use that rationale to justify serving you a glass that's only two thirds beer and one third foam. I'm pretty sure the "fresher longer" excuse is completely made up; it was just the English who figured out that you can tilt the glass when you pour, and everyone else is too stubborn to admit that it's an improvement.

I'm not in Munich for Oktoberfest, but what I had heard about Oktoberfest is that the beer gardens fill up with Japanese people wearing traditional German garb. When we get to the beer garden, we get some seats in the main hall, settle in, and I begin to notice how true those observations are, even in the summer.

This hall is at least 25% filled with Japanese people.

Then a projector starts playing a nature program on a big screen on the wall.

Odd. But we are in Europe, so... normal.

We order our food and some beer. The nature program ends, and some sports coverage begins. The Japanese people start applauding. But a lot of the German people start cheering too.

Is there a Japan-Germany match? In what sport? Wait a second. Some of these German people are speaking English. With American accents. One guy is even wearing an Atlanta Braves cap. I guess a lot of them are Americans. What's going on?

The screen clues us in.

Women's World Cup

Oh, right. I think I had heard something about this. Did we advance or some—

Final Match: Japan-USA

Oh. That's nice. Maybe I'll root for Japan, I don't really care about soccer, and there are a lot of Japanese people here. It'll be fun to root for the other team.

I've estimated that the beer hall is about 25% American, 25% Japanese, and the remainder is a random smattering, but mostly German. The excitement from various places in the beer hall transforms into a well-rehearsed, almost songlike cheer from the crowd of Japanese people when their team takes the field. They're jumping up and down, they're in unison, and they're intense. Then the Germans join in with cheers too, all of them supporting the Japanese team.

The sentiment is clear: if you're in this beer hall and you're not from the US, you're rooting for America to lose. I don't take it as a personal attack, but still, the American in me can only think one thing:

Fuck. That.

I was ready to take the high road and root for the other team. Not anymore. I don't care how well-rehearsed you are, I don't care how much you outnumber us by, I don't care how apathetic I usually am about vocalizing support for my country, especially in something like women's sports. If you're teaming up against America, I will cheer all over you. Fortunately, my American counterparts are equally ambitious. The Japanese singing and cheering is still going strong, until the American team takes the field, and the guy in the Braves cap rolls the snowball down the hill with the three most beautiful letters anyone can yell in a crowded room:

"U.S.A."

The USA chant is a tricky thing. America doesn't really have a rally song, we don't have something we sing at football[14] games, we don't even have a well-known cheer. So the only way a group of Americans can communally and spontaneously show support for their country's team is with the simplest chant of all: USA. Unfortunately, other countries don't seem to realize that it's a tongue-in-cheek cheer, and that very few people choose to honor their country by chanting its name over and over again. Chanting "USA" is really just shorthand for "I've decided to abandon civilized discussion in favor of being louder than you," which is exactly what you want to portray when cheering for sports. But the rest of the world's somewhat understandable belief that the chant is more a form of rude nationalism than a joke amongst Americans means there is an assumed prohibition on it while visiting other countries. And I almost always abide by that prohibition. Almost.

Once the first person starts the chant, the floodgates open. Ever see a group of dogs when a deer or a bird gets close? They all look up and say to themselves, "I'm not sure why, but right now I need to make as much noise as I possibly can." Every American in the room is instantly triggered; it's instinct, we don't even have a choice, although I'm sure if we did, it would have led to the same outcome.

"USA! USA! USA! USA!"

Sayonara to those "Nippon" chants, because the Japanese people get drowned out.

"USA! USA! USA! USA!"

The non-Americans quiet down to listen to the commentary that's beginning on television. Sorry guys, you had your chance at diplomacy.

"USA! USA! USA! USA!"

We do eventually calm down, and seconds later our German waiter returns to the table with our food just as the match begins; he now has a Japanese flag painted on his cheek.

As the waiter is serving our food, the game starts. The following is a timed Bill Simmons-esque diary of my experience watching the game:

**5'** _This is some really good food._

**20'** _That was some really good food._

**25'** _When will this game be over?_

**30'** _This game is literally_ [15] _the most boring thing that's ever happened. End it now. I don't care who wins._

I discover that no amount of blind patriotism can make me genuinely interested in women's soccer. The Japanese are still excited though. Their team is being outplayed in every sense, but they're still going crazy every time the ball enters the American side of the turf. Good for them. Halftime comes and goes.

**50'** _I wish we hadn't eaten yet. Then I could be eating now instead of paying attention to the game._

**60'** _Oh no. What if no one scores? I'm not sure I can handle overtime._

**69'** "GOOOOAAAAAAAAALLLLL!!!! YES! YES! YES! We're going home in 20, guys!" (See also: USA! USA! USA!)

**81** _'_ _Ugh. Japan scored. We're going to overtime. 39 more minutes? Plus breaks?_

Despite our apathy, the Japanese and Germans still love the match. A German guy lifts a Japanese girl on his shoulders.

"Nippon! Deutschland! Nippon! Deutschland!"

My spirit is broken. I do not want to sit through overtime. And for some reason that I still don't understand (but do still agree with), we can't leave until the game ends. It's a tough half hour. Hope is an important thing to have in times like these. But they'll be playing the full 30 minutes no matter what, so hope is abandoned. America scores a goal to take the lead, which doesn't end the game, but at least lessens the boredom with the chance of a victory. Then, somehow, completely unexpected, Japan fires back with another goal of their own.

"Wow, the last time the Japanese surprised the Americans like this, Hawaii became a **—** "

_No Ty! Not the place. This is not the place._ [16]

The Japanese people in the hall go insane for the twentieth time. Where do they get this energy? Exercise, I bet. In contrast, I don't think a single American still honestly cares about the game. Eventually, we get through all 90 minutes of play and all 30 minutes of overtime. But, as if that wasn't cruel enough, the game is still tied, and Fate has to give us a shootout to make the match last just a little bit longer. Eventually the US wins, or maybe they don't, I don't care. The point is we get to leave.

Second Chances: I

I spend a few days in Munich, but I don't end up doing much. It's cold, it's rainy, I'm sick. I spend my time on reasonable tourist activities: walking tours, looking at the now-commercialized remnants of Nazi Germany, and demanding that pharmacists sell me stronger drugs. Alec flies back to the States, and from this point forward I am on my own.

I catch my train to Amsterdam and a group of six Germans in their early 30s, clearly celebrating a bachelor party, jump on my car a few stops later and sit in the seats surrounding mine. They have with them a couple mini-kegs of German brews, and are obviously headed to Amsterdam as well. As I look over at them, I can't help but feel a twinge of jealousy, that maybe I had missed out on a certain aspect of Munich that I wanted to experience. On the other hand, I can always come back in the future, and it will be good to get to Amsterdam without being exhausted. I throw on my headphones, lean back, and just try to appreciate the fact that I get to escape Munich no sicker than I was when I arrived. And then I feel a tap on my shoulder. I look over to see one of the guys from the bachelor party leaning in, holding a cup in his outstretched hand.

"Möchten sie ein bier?"

# Amsterdam

I stand up when the train pulls into the station, and I realize, along with every member of the bachelor party, just how much we've had to drink. Not a generally excessive amount, but an excessive amount for 3:00 in the afternoon. The bachelor party attempts to tell me about a club where I can meet them that night, we bid farewell, and I immediately forget everything they told me.

The Basics

_Delicacies_ : Frites are a Dutch[17] version of French fries. They're worth trying, but be aware that asking for "no mayonnaise" will be interpreted as "Take however much mayo you got back there, double it, and hand me something that looks like a bowl of vanilla ice cream."

_Purchasing Power and Arbitrage_ : In downtown Amsterdam on a Friday night, a single pint of beer can cost you up to €7, but a joint that you can share with one or two friends is only about €3. It's like going to Tokyo and finding out their world-renowned sushi is cheaper than a meal at McDonald's. But instead of risking death by eating potentially toxic pufferfish, you only risk eating too much street food. I suggest accepting that risk, and loading up on pizza, frites, and if any Japanese places are open, maybe just a taste of that toxic pufferfish.

Keizersgracht Kush

I was wrong. They're not just some remnant from the past, this footage was shot recently. And while Americans have relegated these people to the obscure fringes of society, Europeans have embraced them. They're active here, and they have more supporters than I ever would have thought possible in this day and age. How could we be so blind to this back home? Jamiroquai wasn't a one-hit-wonder at all, they're still popular.

I'm in a coffeeshop watching music videos. I'm sharing a table and a gram or two with a couple of Australians I've met. Or maybe they're Canadians. Or something else. I don't remember. We're having a good time discussing and appreciating the merits of European VH1, until one of them selfishly ruins the night by checking his watch.

"Shit, we've got to catch the last tram," he says.

"Hmm? Last tram?" I inquire.

"Yeah, mate, last trams of the night leave in 20 minutes. We've got to go, we'll see you later."

Thanks for the heads up. Although I doubt I'll see you later, or ever again, really. But I guess I need to catch my tram, too. If I hurry, I can catch one at the stop up the street, take that to the main station, and transfer to my line from there.

**12:01** Buy some frites.

**12:03** Hop on the tram.

**12:12** Arrive at the transfer station.

**12:13** Finish the frites.

**12:15** Hop on the last tram of the night, which will stop right in front of my hostel.

Later that night I'm woken up.

I guess my roommates are getting home.

My initial thoughts move to the back of my head, as reality takes over and I feel the first twinges of worry.

Wait, when did I go to bed?

Then I get that feeling. An immediate adrenaline rush, where my heart isn't beating too fast yet, but I know it's going to catch up any second, and right now I have just a solid feeling of "I have definitely fucked up."

I realize I never went to bed. I fell asleep on the tram. Meaning I'm still on the tram. More specifically, I am now wherever the tram went. Less specifically, I have not the slightest clue where that is.

The tram was headed south. We're south of the city center then.

I look out the window. We're south of the entire city. I'm in the suburbs.

I take every ounce of misplaced hope I have, and as we near the next stop I ask the tram driver, "Have we passed the Van Gogh museum?"

No one likes to be laughed at. Especially when it's directed at the misfortune they're currently experiencing. But middle aged Dutch men who drive a night tram for a living are cold, empty people who couldn't give a shit about what you don't like, and they will extract every last bit of enjoyment from your pain as they can by laughing at you for much longer than what could be deemed appropriate. I'm just lucky that when this tram driver's cruel, cruel laughter dies down, he gives me a little advice.

"The night bus stops over there," he points behind us as he slows the tram for the stop, "Good luck getting back." Non-native English speakers usually have a hard time getting sarcasm across, but this guy nails it.

I decide that I will forgo waiting for the night bus and will instead follow the tram tracks back to my hostel. I walk toward the door and wait for the tram to stop.

I step off the tram and immediately change my mind. I hadn't noticed that it's started raining. Netherlands rain. It doesn't seem like this much water can actually be coming down for this length of time; the sky should have run out by now. But somehow it's still falling, and I've got nothing to protect me but a hoodie. I race in the direction that the tram driver had pointed, but I can't see much of anything. I keep heading straight, and almost give up until I spot two girls in their early twenties waiting under a bus stop awning.

I jump under the awning with them. I immediately check out the map at the bus stop to make sure this line will take me back to my hostel, but I quickly realize the futility of my effort. Everything is written in Dutch so I don't know which lines are still running, I don't have a phone, so I can't call a cab, and even if I did, I wouldn't know where to have it pick me up, thanks to the lack of "You Are Here" stickers on European maps.

I always hoped I would die with honor like my grandfather, who was posthumously awarded the Hero of The Republic medal in the Korean War after taking a bullet for Kim Il Sung. But instead it looks like my high school class was right when they voted me most likely to die of exposure while lost in a foreign country and under the influence of Schedule I Narcotics. Or they would have been, until someone throws me a lifeline.

"Kijk naar die stomme klote buitenlander," says one of the girls as she looks over at me.

"Sorry... English?"

"Do you need help with the buses?" She asks me in a sweet voice.

The girls are great. I tell them my situation (forgoing the parts where I prove myself to be a moron), they tell me when the correct bus is coming, and they explain that the line will run right by my hostel.

They begin to ask where I'm from and how long I've been in Amsterdam. When I mention I live near Washington, D.C., they tell me all they know about the American capital, from Barack Obama to the city of Seattle. When I ask where they're going on the bus, they inform me they're actually waiting for a cab, and just standing under this awning until it shows up.

"Why are you taking a cab this far out in the suburbs at night?" I ask.

"Well, you know of the red light district, yes? We do that, but we go to the men's houses," one of the girls says.

Now, save for a birthday present from my dad (The big 1-0) and an ex-girlfriend of mine (Brandine), my experience with whores has been pretty limited. But I have to say, these girls really put a good face on prostitutes for me. Maybe it's just because of the permissive atmosphere of Amsterdam, but apparently being an escort isn't just stabbing Johns, stabbing pimps, and stabbing other prostitutes. It's about being a good person, helping people out, and occasionally stabbing Johns.

We keep talking, and they start telling me about life in Holland, but they are soon picked up by their cab, while I still have 25 minutes before the once-hourly bus shows up.

Twenty-five minutes really doesn't seem like a long time. Unless it's cold out, you're soaking wet, there's heavy rain, and you've only got a small awning to stand under. I just shiver and wait, with nothing but a poster for some festival in Budapest to occupy my thoughts. I've never been to prison, but I imagine this is what "the hole" feels like. And based on that sentence alone, I would clearly never last in prison for more than an hour.

The bus comes. I get on, tell the bus driver where I'm going, and as the only passenger, am practically chauffeured right to my hostel. I step off the bus, walk into my hostel, and go to my room. The lights are on, but no one's there. I take a quick shower to warm up, and come out ready to go to bed.

"Hello!" I hear a girl say in a chipper voice.

It's my new Australian roommate, Jen.

Jen is meeting her boyfriend in Amsterdam, but she flew in from London a day earlier than him because, although she's celebrating tomorrow, today is actually her 29th birthday and she wanted to do something exciting. But she got in late, and everyone at the hostel was already gone. I tell her that almost everyone has gone to a pub crawl, and they won't be back for a while.

An instant later, with the comedic timing of a sitcom, in walk two of our roommates, Mike and Kristen, returning from that pub crawl. Mike is completely sober, but he has been tasked with bringing home an incredibly drunk Kristen. Kristen is loud from the moment she walks in the door, and is at the apex of entertainingly drunk. She's not tired, she's not sick, and despite the fact that she can barely walk, she wants nothing more than to go back out, whereas I want nothing more than a bowl of popcorn, because I'm certain that Jen and I are in for a show. Mike convinces Kristen to lie down, but minutes later she gets up to leave. Mike ignores her; confident she won't even be able to figure out how to open the door. Mike is right. Kristen gives up on her escape attempt and runs back to her bed, slides in head first, overshoots entirely, smacks her head into the wall, and lands on the ground. All four of us start laughing. The spectacle we're getting is at least a small consolation for a few people who had a less than perfect night. Until I notice the pool of blood forming on the floor next to Kristen.

.

Twenty seconds later and we've got Kristen's pillowcase wrapped around her head to slow the bleeding. Jen runs to the front desk to have them call an ambulance, Mike's keeping pressure on her temple where she's got a pretty deep gash, and I tie off the pillowcase to give her a tourniquet/headband combination. And hey, silver lining, the blue cloth we used for the headband kind of makes Kristen look like Leonardo, the ninja turtle; although as the headband starts to absorb blood, she becomes more of a Donatello.

Kristen's been pretty quiet up until now, so drunk that she's not sure what's going on. But when she looks down and sees the red stains covering her clothes, hands, and shoes, the realization of what's happened finally hits her.

"When did I start my period?!" She cries, completely distraught, "I'm supposed to have another week!"

On the downside, the thought of a period of this magnitude while I'm covered up to my elbows in gore preemptively kills any erection I might get for the next month. But on the upside, that's not the only blood to stop flowing, because just a moment later we realize that the tourniquet has done its job, and the wound is no longer bleeding.

The ambulance shows up a few minutes later and we're relieved at the confirmation that the only long-term casualties tonight are going to be Kristen's pride and my T-shirt. But despite the happy ending, whenever the paramedics leave a party, it means it's just about time to go to bed.

The evening may have had some hiccups, but I enjoy meeting some prostitutes, Mike appreciates that he isn't alone in a room in a foreign country with a bludgeoned drunk girl who can't remember how she hurt herself, and we all manage to give an Australian girl a little excitement for her birthday. Although I'm still not sure if the communal optimism is completely genuine, or just a side effect of the celebratory "she didn't die" joint that Mike insists we smoke before we go to bed.

Departure

I somehow oversleep on my last morning in Amsterdam and miss my train to Berlin. When I get to the station I'm able to catch a train headed to Munich, which will allow me to transfer for a Berlin-bound train at the border. I find a seat on a mostly empty car ten minutes before departure, and I collapse, hoping to grab a little shuteye. But within a few minutes, I feel a tap on my shoulder.

"You never met us at the club," I hear in a German accent.

I turn my head and am facing the bachelor party I'd parted ways with at this same train station on Friday afternoon.

"The weather was bad, though, you didn't miss much," he tells me. "How was your weekend?"

"Cold," I tell him, "You didn't miss much either."

And that really is how I'll remember Amsterdam: cold, wet, and unpleasant.[18] I went to a couple of coffee shops, a couple of bars, but really never did much besides that. All weekend I could only think about how beautiful the city is, but that the weather wouldn't let me enjoy it. It didn't help that I still have a cold, and I know that maybe I missed out on a certain aspect of Amsterdam I would have liked to see.

And then my stupid thoughts where I try to simplify my experiences into an unrealistic summation are interrupted by one of the Germans.

"Hey," he tells me, "We picked up some hash brownies for the trip home. You want to have a piece?"

Déjà vu.

A similar invitation on Friday was met with enthusiasm and happiness. But this is the equivalent of wanting to do shots and play blackjack on the flight home from Vegas.

"Sorry man. I appreciate it, but I've gotta say no."

"It's alright," he reassures me, "you're allowed to be a pussy after a weekend in Amsterdam."

I'll remember this conversation for two reasons. One, because this is when I begin to realize that Germans are on a completely different level when it comes to debauchery. And two, because this is not the last time a German will call me a pussy for failing to be on that level myself.

# Berlin

Simply because I won't delve too deeply into history, this is by default one of the least depressing chapters on Berlin you will ever read.

The Basics

_Figureheads_ : Walking through Berlin with someone knowledgeable is like taking a tour of the biggest pricks of the last 100 years. "This is the building where Hitler famously...," "Over here is where Stalin...," "And then Mr. Hasselhoff performed on this very..." None of those assholes were even German, how did they keep taking over the city? I'm surprised Pol Pot never swung by for an honorary week of conquering.

_Architecture_ : The buildings in Berlin are very modern, almost as if they knocked everything over and started rebuilding the city in the 1940s for some reason. This makes it unlike almost any other major city in Europe, since it is not confined to centuries-old city planning. Remember this when Europeans speak highly of their historic architecture. Berlin is evidence that if Europe got the opportunity to start over, they'd barely keep a thing.

Second Chances: II

I get to Berlin with plans to meet up with an Aussie I'd met in Munich. Unfortunately, although I'm feeling a little better, I'm still sick, since a weekend in Amsterdam didn't help my cold as much as I'd hoped.[19] But I've heard amazing stories about the Berlin nightlife, and I'm not about to miss it.

I meet my Aussie friend at his hostel. He's having some drinks with a big group of people in the hostel bar. I'm introduced, and we run through the Four Questions:[20]

Where have you been so far?

Where are you going next?

How long will you be traveling?

Where are you from?

People in general are boring, unoriginal, and repetitive, and the questions I've been asked are just further evidence of that. You can expect to be asked the Four Questions almost every single day you travel. Running through them over and over can sometimes be a little aggravating. Still, I can't really fault them, since they're great ice-breakers, they lead to naturally interesting answers and stories, and they're one of the best ways to do research on where to travel. Not to mention, if you tweak them just slightly, they can double as a line of questioning for when you suspect your significant other of cheating on you.[21]

After we get to know one another, I'm informed of our plans for the night. Two of the girls in the group, in fact the only two girls in the group, are Swiss-French. But they both also speak German. It's great news, because the only thing better for finding a city's nightlife than having a friend who speaks the local language is having an attractive girl who speaks the local language—and we have two of them. And these two had heard about a club earlier in the day that they're going to take us to. At around 8:00 we head out for dinner.

We decide to eat near the club. We take the Metro, and as we start walking out of the station, one of the girls stops and points to what looks like a utility closet.

"This is the club," she says.

The club is in a utility closet? Well obviously it's not a utility closet, but what's behind there? How do they get away with having it in a Metro station?

I figure I'll know the answers soon enough, so I don't ask any questions. We continue past the club and we find a restaurant. But when we sit down I realize that I'm not too hungry, and I barely touch my food. Then we go to a bar up the street to have a few more drinks before we go to the club. The more I drink, the worse I feel. The cold that I thought was just about gone is catching up with me again. I can feel my forehead heating up, and I'm getting a headache. I know that if I drink anything else my stomach will just send it right back up. I try to push through, but it's no use. I need to stop drinking, and I need to go to bed.

Damnit.

Here I am, with a tourist's dream package, a couple of (quasi) locals, who know exactly where the best hidden night spots are, and I can't stick around for it. I excuse myself, take the Metro back to my hostel, and go to bed.

.

The next morning I feel awful. Not sick—in fact, after over a week of having a cold, I finally wake up feeling perfectly healthy—I just feel awful because I blew such a great opportunity to have a good night. I didn't really have a choice, there was no way I could have stayed out, but it's still frustrating.

I spend the day seeing the city, and come back to my hostel in the early evening. On my way through the lobby I meet a guy from New Zealand named Ben. He's a tall, dark-haired, in-shape 27 year old who just about perfectly fits my perception of a Kiwi. He asks me if I want to grab dinner with him and some friends.

I meet him in the lobby about an hour later, and he introduces me to the friends he'd just met that afternoon, Lara and Natalie, two Swiss-German girls. It's the last night in Berlin for all three of them, so they all want to go out. Fortunately, the girls know about a club.

I don't mention the coincidence; I'm too embarrassed about being a quitter the previous evening to explain what happened. We run through the Four Questions, and we're all good friends. The girls ask if we're ready to go to dinner.

We eat at a cheap little takeout shop that has a few tables, and we have a beer or two while we watch a rugby match. The shop closes at 9:00, so we move to a little dive bar up the street to have another beer and keep watching the match. We play a drinking game that I suspect the girls may have just invented, since it focuses much more on shaming the two participants who don't speak any German than actually drinking any alcohol. Around midnight we leave for the Metro, and get to our destination a little before 1:00. It isn't the same stop as the night before; I had been curious if all Swiss girls went to the same clubs. But then, as we're walking out of the station, right when the stairs get to street level, Lara points to a utility closet.

"Here's the club," she says.

No way.

I listen for a second and hear faint music. Lara opens the door and the music gets louder. We walk down a corridor, and get to another door. We open it and the music gets louder. There is a bouncer on a stool in front of yet another door, with a handful of people standing around in front of him. Lara walks up to the bouncer, leans in to say something, presumably in German, and he waves us in. I don't know if most people have to pay a cover, but I like to think that they do.

We step through the door and walk into the club. It's dark, so I can't tell if this is a full time club or if it doubles as something else during the day. The music is an odd fusion of German-electronic and folk; imagine if some house DJs from Kentucky remixed _Der Kommissar_. I buy a beer, and rather than being handed an overpriced bottle from a fridge or a freshly poured pint glass, I'm charged €2 for a can from a cooler. The location, music, and cost of beer, combined with the fact that someone tries to sell me ecstasy before I can even walk away from the bar, leads me to believe I'm at an illegal rave, and not an actual club, which just makes the girls' find even more impressive.

About an hour after our arrival I need to get rid of a couple of beers. I walk into the bathroom, and I see a man saving a woman's life. She's up against the sink, gasping for breath, and he's giving her the Heimlich maneuver.

Oh my God, she's choking! Thank God that guy is here to help—Oh, nope, her skirt's hiked up, they're fucking. Jesus, I'm dumb.

And while that may be the first act of explicit sex I see that night, it isn't the last. Anyone who's been to a club knows it's not uncommon to see anything up to and including second base. But the Germans don't understand baseball, and their efficient mannerisms send them straight for home. It's not that enough people are having sex to make me wonder if we've accidentally wandered into an orgy, it's only a handful of couples, but it's hard not to notice them once you're aware that it's happening.

At some point Natalie makes us all aware of an overweight woman making out with a man who is much too old to be at a club, and while her, Lara, and I debate whether a baby can be born already obese and middle-aged, Ben disappears.

"Where's Ben?!" I yell.

"He probably went to get a beer!" Lara says.

.

Almost an hour passes and no one's seen Ben. We're not worried about him; we just hope we can find him before we leave.

"I'm going to get some beers!" Lara yells.

"You got the last round," I tell her, "I'll go."

I don't know if she got the last round, but I need to pee again, so I'm planning to go past the bar anyway. I walk across the club and into the bathroom. There's no one having sex against the counter anymore, but as I walk in I'm looking directly at a stall where two people are fooling around. And that's not speculation; the stall has no door. I ignore the guy's good fortune, and go to a urinal. And when I finish up and begin to walk out of the bathroom, someone recognizes me.

"Hey Ty!" I hear.

I look around, and don't see anyone at first. Then I turn to the stalls and see a familiar face.

"Ben!" I say excitedly, finding our missing fourth. He's sitting on the toilet, and has a girl in a skirt sitting on his lap and facing him.

I feel the little jolt of happiness you get when you see something good happen to a friend, even though this good thing is actually pretty disgusting. I'm tempted to give him a congratulatory high-five, but decide against it since any contact between us might technically make it a three-way, and not the good kind. I leave the bathroom and walk to the bar to get the drinks.

I wonder if I should have offered to grab Ben and his friend a drink. Would that make me a weirdo or an awesome friend? I guess those aren't mutually exclusive.

I wait at the bar for a good ten minutes, but my gender keeps me from getting the attention of the bartender.[22] I wait so long that before I even get the chance to buy a beer, Ben is already walking out of the bathroom with his lady friend. Then he's approached and shoved around a bit by a pretty big guy. And then by two big guys.

Shit.

I figure there are two likely possibilities. Best case, some bouncers caught Ben with that girl in the bathroom and are about to throw him out. Worst case, one of those guys is dating that girl who was just on top of Ben. I've known Ben for maybe eight hours, and I am not excited at the prospect of getting into a fight because of him. Not because I'm anti-violence, I'm just anti-getting-punched-in-the-face. Still, he seems like a pretty good guy, and he has no one else in his corner, so I feel obligated to help him out.

I walk over toward Ben as briskly as I can without knocking anyone out of the way, but before I can reach him, he's already running away from the two guys, headed in my direction.

"Ben! What's happening?!" I yell as he nears me.

"Ty!" he screams when he spots me, barely slowing his pace, "Come on!"

I don't know why I follow him, but I do. I guess when someone is running and yells "Come on," you don't stop to question it. Ben plows a path out of the club and I follow in his wake. We scramble to get through the series of doors we came in, surge onto the street, and round the corner at the end of the block.

"I don't think there's anyone chasing us!" I tell him after I glance behind us.

And with that, Ben drops from a full sprint to a light stroll, and the two of us start to catch our breath. A few seconds later, I recap what just occurred and I can't keep from chuckling.

"What the hell happened?! Who was that girl? Those guys? Why were we running?" I ask overtop my own laughter.

Ben starts laughing too, but considering what he says next, I'm not sure why he's so jovial.

"I don't know who the girl was; she just said she liked my abs." He says excitedly with a smile on his face, "But one of those blokes shoving me was a drug dealer. I bought some coke off him."

Cocaine is relatively cheap in the US, and it's not much different in Europe. Most people never touch the stuff, but I guess most people know in the back of their minds they can always try it if they want. In Australia and New Zealand, it's so expensive that they don't have that option, so most of the Aussies and Kiwis I've met take the opportunity to try it while they're in Europe. I'm not really shocked at the revelation that he's buying coke. I am, however, a little concerned that there may be an angry drug dealer chasing us.

"Why was he shoving you? Did you rip him off? Are we about to get our asses kicked?!" My tone gets serious and my merriment has been replaced by my fear of being beaten up by large, coked-out German guys. Ben's demeanor follows suit and he gets serious when he remembers again why we were running.

"No, don't worry, I paid him. The dealer wasn't the one that was angry, anyway. It was the other guy, his mate, who started shoving me. He was dancing with that girl first. And then she started dancing with me. Then a little later we went to the toilet. When he saw us walking out I guess he realized what happened and he got jealous. The dealer was just backing up his mate. But then his mate said he was gonna kick my ass. Said he knew the bouncers and he'd get them to grab me and call the cops. Have 'em arrest me for the coke. That's when I ran."

"So you haven't done the coke yet?"

"C'mon, mate. Do I look like I'm high?"

I know the question is rhetorical, but considering that he just hooked up with a stranger in a public bathroom, almost got into a fight, and led me charging out of the club and down the street, I would have liked a more definitive response. Still, I take his word for it.

"You should probably get rid of it then, he might not have been bluffing about getting the bouncers to call the cops on you, and we've got to walk past that club to get to the Metro," I warn.

"I can't get rid of it," he tells me.

"You can buy more later, don't risk it."

"No, I mean I don't have it anymore. I tried to share some with the girl I was with, but I dropped it in the toilet," he tells me, "Forty Euros. Cost forty Euros and it fell in the fuckin' toilet. I was really looking forward to trying it, too."

"Wait. If you don't have any coke, then why were you running away when they threatened to get the cops?" I ask, confused, but with my smile coming back.

"Shit...I don't know," he says, realizing his lapse in logic, "y'reckon it wouldn't have been a problem?"

I can't help but laugh at his cluelessness and misfortune. And he can't help but laugh at me laughing.

The two of us calm down, relatively sure that the dealer isn't going to chase us down just to appease his angry friend. We know we're not getting back into the club since the doorman just saw us bolt out, and even if we were able to persuade him to let us in despite not speaking any German, we'd still like to avoid the dealer and his friend. So we find a kebab shop and buy some food. When we're done eating I buy Ben a bottle of Coca-Cola as a consolation present, and hand it to him without saying a word.[23] At about 5:00 a.m., a little before the first train is supposed to start running, we work our way back to the Metro.

We walk past the door for the club, and still hear the music playing. We go down into the Metro station, find our platform, and wait a few minutes for a train, until our unimportant chatter is interrupted.

"What the fuck?!" we hear, "Where are our beers?!"

We turn around to see Natalie and Lara, walking down the stairs to our platform. They're smiling, but they do, understandably, look a little pissed. We explain to them what happened, and the three of us can't help but make jokes at Ben's expense for the entire trip back to the hostel. Ben laughs with us, but I'm still not entirely sure he understands why.

# Kiwis

New Zealanders are basically Australians, except they're better at rugby.[24]

# Budapest

_Scene:_ _A Berlin Hostel. Late July, 2011._

Me:

I'm going to Budapest about a week and a half from now.

Dutch Girl:

You're going to Sziget! I really wanted to. Where are you staying?

Me:

I'm going where?

Dutch Girl:

You know, Sziget. The 400,000-person, weeklong music festival in Budapest. One of the biggest festivals in all of Europe. A festival that coincides with almost the exact same dates you'll be in the city. It's the only reason someone would be foolish enough to visit Budapest about a week and a half from now. You're able to stand upright and hold a conversation, so you're not severely mentally impaired, which must mean that you have already been aware of this festival for some time now and have therefore planned accordingly. So I ask you again, where are you staying?

Me:

Pshh, of course I know about Seapets. I'm staying at a place; it's near the big landmark.

Now you'll have to excuse me... while I deal with... something unrelated...

.

With this new information, I have to hurry and figure out where I'm going to stay when I get to Budapest. I run quicker than I have in a while. Although I've never been one for exercise, so let's refer to it as "jogging." I'm on the 6th floor. My computer is locked up on the 2nd. There's no time to wait for the elevator, so I pick up some speed and fly down the spiral staircase. And "fly" is barely a figure of speech, because I doubt my feet touch down more than once every five steps. I charge into my room, open my computer, and log onto a hostel booking website. There is, literally, one single bed in one single hostel still available for all the dates that I want.

Booking Confirmed.

The Basics

_The Locals_ : A kind, hard-working people. Or so I imagine. If you go to Budapest during a massive music festival, you're mostly going to meet Dutch tourists.

_Thermal Baths_ : Going to the famous "baths" of Budapest is paying $10 to sit in a public pool that happens to be filled with spring water. With all the old Hungarian men who don't bathe beforehand sitting alongside of you, it's actually a little gross, and it will seem like a waste of time and money. Until you spend a few days in the city and notice that Hungarian girls are empirically the most attractive girls in all of Europe. It's silly to even debate it. Then you realize you're not paying $10 for spring water. You're paying $10 to hang out with your friends and check out ridiculously beautiful girls in bathing suits for 3 hours while simultaneously justifying it as an enriching cultural experience. I swear I'm not a total creep.

Sziget

It's my last full day in Budapest and some friends of mine are getting day passes to Sziget, the festival I had been unaware of just a couple of weeks earlier. I decide to join them, and the six of us cram onto the Metro, transfer to an even more crowded tram, trudge down a street packed with people, wait in line to buy our tickets, and enter the festival.

I should state that I'm the only guy in my group. Meaning that I am with five girls. And whenever five girls go anywhere notable, they all want to do the exact same thing as soon as they get there[25]: buy a souvenir. So, we all go to a T-shirt stand, and the girls each try to buy one. But they can't, because they don't take cash at Sziget, they only take cards. Not credit cards, but special Sziget souvenir debit cards. So we go to a stand that sells them and each of us buys one. I put the equivalent of about $25 US on mine—wary of high festival prices, but knowing that I won't be buying much.

After the girls get their shirts, we want to actually experience what the festival has to offer, which means lining up to get some beer. And when I look at the selection, what I see is nothing short of beautiful:

.5 Liter Draft - 430 HUF

At the current exchange rate, one Hungarian forint (HUF) is worth a little less than half a cent, which means the price works out to about $1.99 US per half liter. Eastern European prices are cheap, I know that already. But $1.99 for a half liter of beer, and at a festival no less? That's just downright economical.

So, we put our financial acumen to work and capitalize on the exchange rates. The low price point forces an increase in the quantity demanded, and the purchasing cycle begins in 20-30 minute intervals. When lagging indicators begin to demonstrate sufficient market saturation, the cycle slows as the demand curve begins to shift left and the consumers reach equilibrium. Within a few hours we are completely Bernanke'd.

The day creeps into late afternoon, and the famous bands begin to perform. Chemical Brothers, Judas Priest, Good Charlotte—I guess more accurately the used-to-be-famous bands begin to perform. I'm drinking cheap beer, listening to pop-punk, and hanging out with girls I won't be having sex with; I'm just one bad goatee and some cargo shorts away from being back in high school.[26]

As the sole guy in a group of girls, and the only one with pockets big enough to fit anything larger than a Chapstick, I inevitably become the designated holder-of-everything. At some point I am given an Australian flag and a pair of broken sunglasses missing the temples. In my ingenuity I decide to wear the flag as a headband, and use the headband to hold the broken sunglasses up over my eyes. The Australian flaglasses I construct make people begin to suspect that I am Australian. I would guess it's because of the dark lenses, since nobody can see my glowing eyes of American freedom.

What I learn that day is that if an Australian ever asks, "Where ya' from?" you can convince them of your true Australian heritage by saying nothing more than, "Melbun!" That will then be met with one of two responses, either "I'm from Melbun!" or "Aww, fuckin' Melbun, hey."

.

In either situation, get ready, because you're about to export some liberty. They'll give you a high-five, maybe they'll wrap their arm around your shoulder, and if you're lucky, they'll get a picture taken with you. And, as you're posing for that picture, you turn your head and you look directly at them, you lift up your sunglasses to expose them to your glimmering pupils of technological advancement and your radiant corneas of irresponsible gun ownership, and you whisper to them in a Nebraskan accent, "Hey... Hey buddy. I don't know how much a kilogram is."

If you've timed it right then they'll turn to you and realize their folly the instant the picture is taken. They'll appear shocked, almost disgusted that they were fooled, and that's exactly what you want. Because, although in the short term they'll be upset with you, we're playing the long game. From that day forward, whenever they look at that photograph, they'll feel a hunger. A hunger for America. They'll crave high-fructose corn syrup and "organic" vegetables while rejecting things like socialism and anything mislabeled as socialism. Within a few months they'll have a pickup truck and demand to be able to fill the tank with gas for less than the price of a doctor's visit. Eventually they'll be full-blown Americans, decrying the Australification of Oceania as they insist upon a border fence with New Zealand. And then the transformation will be complete.

Research into a practical goal for any of this is pending, but we remain optimistic that there is an upside. Concurrent studies into the potential risks of brainwashing an entire population are misleading and inconsequential.

.

The concert continues long past dark, and the headlining band Kasabian takes the stage. I know very little about Kasabian, and a festival is not the place to hear a band for the first time. So, I take a quick break and head to the porta-potties. I prove once again that I'm able to hold my breath for longer than it takes me to pee, walk away from the stalls, and go to meet my friends.

I'm at the back of the crowd, trying to remember exactly where we were standing. I look at the sea of fans, 300 meters wide and 200 meters deep.

Okay, directly in front of me is a crowd of at least 100,000 people. I think we were standing toward the left...

Any attempt to find them is hopeless. I don't even try to lie to myself that I might be lucky enough to run into them. I decide to give them back their stuff when I see them at the hostel, and I just stand back and enjoy the show. When the concert ends I make my way to the exit. But, before I leave, I realize it's almost midnight, and I haven't eaten anything since lunch. So, I take my debit card and go to the only food stand I can find that's still open. All it sells are hot dogs. I read the short menu, and see the four options: _Plain, Hungarian, Fancy, American._

In other countries if something has been labeled as "American" or "American-style," that's a dead giveaway that you have never, ever seen it in America. Things like American-style pizza, which is pizza topped with hot dog slices and French fries. Or an American-style sandwich, which is macaroni and cheese, topped with ketchup, served on a hamburger bun. I guess it's just an excuse to indulge in something disgusting while placing the shame that should be associated with that indulgence onto a different culture.[27] Still, curiosity gets the better of me.

"One American, please," I tell the woman.

She takes a hot dog and puts it in a bun.

So far, so good.

She adds some mustard and hot sauce.

Not traditional, not too weird.

Then she justifies the American styling. She scoops up some French's fried onion straws, the kind that come from a can and people use in green bean casseroles, and some crushed-up almonds, and throws them on top.

And that's how people view America.

This is the weirdest hotdog I've ever eaten, but damn if it isn't delicious. I'm totally okay with this becoming the standard for American Style hotdogs from this point forward as long as it means we get them in the US from now on. It's so good that I buy another one. And as I pay for it, I look at the little LED screen where I swiped my card. It says I still have a balance of about eight dollars in my account.

"Eh, mate, you're not gonna let that money go to waste, are you?" asks an Australian I had been chatting with while waiting in line.

"I dunno... I mean, I need to—"

"Of course you're not, because I still have twice that much on my card, and I need a partner to spend money with me."

"I mean, it's kind of late, and—"

"You don't want the festival people to win, do ya mate?"

The thought of "losing" to a personified corporate entity is enough to change my mind.

"Hell no! What are we buying?!"

"Well, there's only two things open right now. This hot dog stand and that beer cart."

"I have been training for this day with every baseball game I've ever attended."

"Funny accent ya got, mate. What part'a 'Stralia ya from?"

I'd forgotten that I'm still wearing the Australian flag around my head. I take it off and cram it into my pocket far enough that it won't fall out. The Australian and I eat our hot dogs, while planning how to spend the remainder of the money on our cards.

The plan is not very complicated. Even on an empty stomach a third hot dog would be a bit much, which means I still have money for four beers. Me and my new Aussie friend line up at the beer cart, and meet a dozen other people doing the exact same thing as us. My $8 balance is the lowest of anyone there. Some of my new friends have as much as $40 left to spend. I feel like I'm in prison, serving a 30-day sentence for a petty misdemeanor, while the rest of my cellblock is in for armed robbery. Except in this prison, the bars are made of beer and you have to drink your way out.

It is through the strength I find in my fellow inmates that I am able to serve my time with dignity and purpose. When they pour that fourth and final beer, it's like I am standing in front of the parole board. My interview goes down much more quickly and smoothly than expected, and I am released to the free world. I look back toward the friends I had met on the inside. The bond we formed is a strong one, and I don't want to leave without them. A solidarity that deep is the kind of thing incarceration can do to a man. But I know in my heart that I don't still belong there, and I turn my back and walk out of the festival. Get busy living, or get busy dying. Ty was here.

I leave the festival and squeeze onto a tram. At the last stop, I get off to transfer onto my Metro line, and I, along with 200 other festival goers, realize that the Metro is closed until morning. Fortunately, the steel gate that bars our entry has a single sheet of paper taped on it to give us guidance:

Night Bus?

The whole crowd follows the arrow out of the station and up the block to a bus stop, and someone reads the bus schedule aloud:

"00:40, 01:40, 02:40, 03:40, 04:40"

I look at my watch; it's 1:45 am.

5 minutes late, 55 minutes early.

Some people grab the handful of available cabs that are waiting by the bus stop, but they all disappear quickly, some people start walking, and about 50 of us line up to wait for the bus.

Ever since the sun's gone down I have been surrounded by people, and the communal body heat had kept me from realizing just how cold it has gotten. It isn't freezing or anything, but it's too cold for someone wearing just a T-shirt and shorts. I take the Australian flag out of my pocket and use it as a thin, half-sized blanket. Then I try using the broken sunglasses I have to start a fire by magnifying the sun's rays. It doesn't really work, but I learn a few tips for the next time I build a fire.

a) To start a fire, you need something to set on fire.

b) Sunglasses block rays of sun, they do not magnify them.

c) There is no sunshine at 2:00 am.

The bus picks us up on time, and I am able to get back to my hostel before 4:00 am, where I am welcomed by the night porter, and he tells me I'm the first member of my group to return. I hand him everything I had been asked to hold, and he agrees to give it all back to my friends when they show up. We whisper about the festival for much longer than I plan, and I'm not in bed until 4:30. The next morning I am woken up by the sounds one hears in a hostel, and I don't sleep a minute past 8:00. I don't care though, I have a six-hour train ride ahead of me today, and I can sleep then. I bounce out of bed, use my few reserves of energy to make the most of my last morning in Budapest, and then I grab my pack and head for the train station.

# Budapest to Zagreb

Planning Ahead

Four days before I go to the Sziget festival, as soon as I arrive in Budapest, I choose to play it safe. I have a Eurail pass, which allows me to ride on any train I want, but won't guarantee me somewhere to sit. So I decide to get a reservation for my train out of Budapest, five days in advance, to make sure I have a seat among all the other festival goers. I wait at the train station for 94 minutes (I know the exact wait because there's a timestamp on the take-a-number ticket I get when I enter the reservation office; I'm convinced its only there to mock me). During my wait I get a kebab, figure out how to take the Metro to my hostel, pay 85 Florints to pee, and still have another 72 minutes to kill. When my number is finally called I walk up to the window.

"Hi, I'd like to reserve a seat to Zagreb on Friday," I tell the woman behind the glass.

"It's always empty. We don't do reservations for that train," she fires back without a hint of humanity.

Nothing good will ever come from planning ahead.

The Day After the Festival

I show up to the train station 30 minutes early to make sure I can get a seat. I'm still exhausted from the festival the day before, and can barely even stand up at the station. The train pulls in, and a heavy stream of fellow exhausted festival goers start piling on. I find a second- class car, grab a seat in one of the compartments, and soon I can tell that all the other seats on the train have filled up, because people are now starting to pack the aisle outside the compartment.

" _Always empty."_

The woman's words echo in my mind and I smirk. Despite my amusement, I know that I would be pissed if I waited all that time to get a reservation, showed up early, and still couldn't get a seat on the train. Fortunately I can just relax and maybe catch a nap before getting to Croatia. But, five minutes before the train leaves, an older woman, in her 60s or early 70s, sticks her head in the compartment:

"I want to remind you all that this is a first-class compartment."

_Shit_.

She starts speaking in Hungarian, or maybe Croatian, to the other people in the car. I begin to panic and look around until I see a sign on the door that says "2."

"This is a second-class train," I say. "There's a '2' on the door."

"Normally yes," she hits back, "But today, due to the crowding, this car is reserved for first-class passengers. There is a sign on the door when you enter the train. We're letting everyone know so that you don't get fined."

I need to pay more attention to signs written in Hungarian.

I pick up my bag and head out into the hall. It's lined with people. I make my way down the hall into a corridor that connects two cars. There's enough room that I can take a seat against the wall, and I'm able to get a little sleep. After a couple of hours the crowd starts to thin out and I even manage to grab a seat a couple of cars down, until the conductor walks through ten minutes later:

"Everyone must move to the back of the train."

"Why?" someone asks.

"This half of the train is being disconnected and goes back to Budapest. Everyone going to Croatia must go to the other half of the train."

Oh good, only the people headed to Croatia are staying on the train. I mean, how many people are heading to Croatia on a train to Croatia? All of them? Yeah, probably about all of them.

We all stand up, trudge through the cars, and start to cram back into the other half of the train when I pass by the initial compartment that I had been evicted from at the start of the trip, and I take a look inside.

Wait a second.

I get the same feeling I used to get as a kid a few minutes after I would make a trade with my older brother, when I realized just how badly I'd been ripped off. Sitting in my former seat is the woman who told me that it was a first-class car and that I had to leave.

What's a train employee doing in my seat? Is she... she's not even a train employee. Then why would she tell me I had to get up and move? Unless... No, she must have been telling the truth, what about the signs she said they put up?

I scan every wall and door as I walk through that car. There are only two signs for the entire length of the car: one says "2nd Class," the other is a no-smoking symbol. I didn't need a first-class ticket. She made the whole thing up just to steal my seat.

Dammit!

I've been scammed, and by an old lady no less. Old ladies aren't supposed to scam you; they're supposed to send you money on your birthday. And the worst thing is, if she had just stuck her head in and asked "Do any of you young people want to give up your seat for a feeble old thing like me?" I'm sure I would have offered mine. It would have been the least I could do to give some comfort to that old and decrepit thing that's so close to a sad and lonely death.[28] And I would have had a good feeling for the rest of the day for helping someone out. But instead, even though I lose my seat either way, I'm feeling like a sucker instead of a good person. I'm left to surmise that old people are terrible, and the only reason they've survived so long is because they've all thrown someone nicer than them under the bus.[29]

By the time everyone has finished flowing into the new half of the train, I've carved out a tiny 18-inch span of wall to lean against. I'm shoulder to shoulder with equally unhappy passengers, with my pack between my legs. It's mid-August, so the heat without all these other people is already pretty bad, but the heat with them is almost unbearable. And of course you're not going to have air conditioning on a public train in Hungary, which wouldn't be a huge deal, but the windows in the car can slide open no more than three inches. None of this is really bad news though. Well, none of it is the worst news. That's because the worst news is that we're right by the bathroom. And every time the door opens, the stench of an Eastern-European public toilet in mid-August fills the hall, stagnant in a hot train with no ventilation.

Absolutely miserable. That's the only way I can describe the next two hours on that train. I'm hot, tired, uncomfortable, and just hoping someone will skirt the rules and light a cigarette to improve the air quality. The train ride is terrible until we get to Croatia.

The border really brings out the worst in me. If someone's not from North America, Australia, or Europe, then they need to get an actual visa to enter the country, and a lot of people from those countries didn't realize that ahead of time. A large group of Argentinians who had been with us in the hallway are taken off the train first, presumably to go through bureaucratic hell. As the border patrol agents make their way through the car, more and more people are being asked to step outside. I actually feel ashamed of myself for how happy I get every time someone is kicked off, because the more that leave, the more room there is for the rest of us. When the border check is almost finished the amount of people left on the car has been halved, and the hallway has been almost completely emptied as people find seats in the train compartments. Dirty as the train is, it seems like everyone left in its hallway is as exhausted as I am, and we're all fine with sitting on the grimy floor.

Two agents are finishing up their inspections on our end of the train. The first is asking a guy from Korea to step off the train, while the second is speaking to a couple of British girls across the aisle from me. He talks to them while holding their passports.

"City of birth?" he asks them. The girls answer no problem, but I get nervous, knowing that I'm going to be interviewed next.

Shit, what city was I born in? I'm an adult, how do I not know this?

I try to open my passport to see the answer before I can be questioned, but the other agent has already approached me, and he takes my passport out of my hands before I get the chance to find out. He reads through it closely, almost every page, then looks at me.

"City of birth?" he asks. I don't have a clue.

"Maryland?"

He stamps my passport and hands it back to me. He turns to his colleague, who's still speaking to the British girls, and he says something in Croatian. His colleague hands the passports back to the girls.

"Can we have a stamp?" one of them asks.

"No," the border agent replies.

Lack of border stamps—the biggest downside to an EU passport.

"Ouch," I say when the border agent shoots the girl down, "It's an ugly stamp though, you're not missing much."

Four questions.

The girls are grad students on the last leg of their summer vacation. As soon as the standard questions are over, one of the girls begins a more specified quiz, as British girls are wont do. I answer to the best of my ability:

We sit on the ground for two hours, never talking about anything more important that my ignorance of British culture. We're too tired to move, even though there's now plenty of room to sit further away from the bathroom. Finally getting to Zagreb is as much of a curse as a blessing, since I don't think any of us want to stand up. We reluctantly climb off the train and make our way into the station. The girls have to hurry to catch a bus, and I start making my way to my hostel.

The trip may have been a bit of a disaster, but it has taught me a couple of lessons. One, never plan ahead, it just wastes time. Two, never trust a lonely old woman in Europe. Even if she's not trying to scam you, she's still a lonely old woman in Europe. I can't think of anyone more likely to be a witch.

# Zagreb

No, not Zurich. Zagreb. It's a city. In Croatia. Croatia the country. You know, it's kind of down there between Italy and the Balkans. The Balkans, come on, remember? America was bombing the region back in the 90s. No, not Iraq. Not Sudan, either; we didn't even bomb Sudan. Actually, don't quote me on that, we probably did. But I'm talking about Eastern Europe. Did you ever see that one Owen Wilson movie where he was behind enemy lines? Yeah, _Zoolander_. I think Croatia is where the evil Russian chick who worked for Mugatu was from.

The Basics

_Expectations_ : You go to Eastern Europe not completely sure what it will be like. You're half expecting to need an AK-47 and some hand grenades, as you prepare for something as dismal as Detroit while hoping for something as awesome as _Mad Max_. But thanks to diplomacy and steady economic growth, the war torn countries we all used to know are a thing of the past, and Zagreb is just like any other little city. You should be fine with just a crossbow.

Broatia

I make it to my hostel within half an hour of getting off the aforementioned awful train ride. I check in, get my key, and go to my room, ready to call it an early night. I walk inside and meet my roommates, a trio of Australian girls spending their last night in Croatia.

We make small talk and run through the Four Questions, but I just keep eyeing the bed, waiting for this conversation to be over so I can get some sleep.

"We're going on a pub crawl. Ya keen to join us?" one of the girls asks before I can even put my things away.

I really want to go to sleep. But I'm only spending a day and a half in Zagreb, and I don't want my only memory of this place to be a hostel mattress.

"It's just you three going on the pub crawl?" I ask, hoping that it might just be more of a few friends going out for drinks than a proper pub crawl, giving me an excuse to stay in.

"No, mate, there's heaps of us going, you should come."

Goddamnit.

Thirty minutes later I'm walking with a group of twenty people from my hostel toward an Irish pub. The hostel is located in a combination strip mall/apartment complex, and the pub is on the other side of the complex's parking lot. We try to walk into the pub, but a hostess at the door tells us that it's closed for a private party. So we head to the tram stop a couple of blocks away to go downtown. I hop on, not knowing anyone but the three Aussie girls.

.

Four hours later I arrive back at that tram stop with a couple of Portuguese guys and a Welshman. One of the Portuguese guys, Andre, had just been dumped by his German girlfriend that day via email, and we have spent the last few hours trying to keep his mind off of it. He is taking it all like a champ, though. No anger, no sorrow, just mildly bittersweet undertones to his words as he accepts this new chapter of his life, the way we all wish we acted after breakups, but never do.[30]

We try to get into the Irish pub again on the stroll back from the tram stop, are rejected once more, and continue across the parking lot to our hostel. I go to my room to flush out a few beers, and come back to the lobby to say goodnight to everyone. The lobby is a cramped space near the front door of the hostel that doubles as a common room; it's less than 100 square feet, and is really more of a big alcove than an actual room. The hostel is pretty new, and therefore pretty empty. There is nothing but a reception desk, a large display fridge full of soda and beer, a poster next to the fridge for an upcoming Jamiroquai concert, and a futon against the wall adjacent to the desk. My friends are all standing at the reception desk talking to the sole employee.

"How much for the Jager?" asks the Welshman.

Jager? What's he talking about? It's a check-in desk, not a bar.

But before I open my mouth to ask, I realize the grave situation I'm facing. In the display fridge, above the sodas and beers, there are four bottles. Big bottles. Vodka, whiskey, a mysterious Croatian liquor, and of course, Jagermeister.

"Ty, we're going to have a drink," says Andre.

I don't like this one bit. I have no problem with having "a drink." But we aren't having just a drink. I know that for two reasons. One, a mildly intoxicated man has just been dumped by his girlfriend. Two, the drink in question isn't a beer, or whiskey, or even tequila. It is Jagermeister. And to take a shot of Jagermeister is to make an inherent agreement that no one is allowed to go to sleep until you've all put yourselves in a position to regret the night. But, despite whatever physical exhaustion I am facing, however much I may want to go to bed, I cannot. A man, a friend even, albeit a new friend, has just been dumped, and he wants to have a drink. And I feel compelled by some sense of fraternal duty to join him.

"7 Kuna each for Jagermeister," says the guy working the desk. He's a Tunisian thirty-something who has been living in Zagreb since the beginning of the year. I've got no problem with him, but I don't like what he's just told us. At current exchange rates, 7 Croatian Kuna is about 1 USD. When a round of shots is only four bucks, people get generous.

"First one's on me," says the Welshman to us before turning his attention back to the guy behind the desk, "So that's 28 Kuna? Or 35 Kuna if you want a shot, too."

"Fuck no, I don't drink that shit," the Tunisian responds passionately, "Shit's against my religion." Religion or not, this guy is fully enjoying the less reverent parts of the English language.

"It's okay if we do shots here, though, right?" replies the Welshman.

"Fuck yeah, you're good guys. I like you. Have a good time. Just keep the noise down. It's almost 2."

We're doing shots of Jager. We can only promise to do the opposite of that.

The Tunisian allows the Welshman to pour everyone's drinks, and he pours as generously as the shot glasses will allow.

"To other fish," says the Welshman, as he raises his glass.

"Huh?" asks Andre.

"Figure of speech. To better girls," he clarifies.

"Salud," responds Andre, and we all down our drinks.

"I like it!" Andre proclaims, "It tastes like anus!"

"I'm sorry, has he said he likes the taste of anus?" the Welshman asks me.

"The drink," Andre says, now unsure of himself, "it tastes like the spice. Anus, yes?"

"Anise. It tastes like anise," I clarify, trying not to laugh. I don't normally make fun of a non-native's ability to speak English, but I will have to bite my tongue the rest of the night to avoid making butt jokes at Andre's expense.

The Welshman puts a few more coins on the desk and starts pouring another round.

"To anus!" He says, and we again take our shots.

"You seem like a good person, Ty. Have you ever been in love?" asks Andre to me, before I can even set my glass down.

I pause a second, unsure how to answer a man nursing a broken heart, "Well, it—"

"I've been in love," he interrupts. "I am in love. But I've lost her."

"It wasn't meant to be," says his Portuguese friend, whose name I cannot remember for the life of me. He is the non-Andre Portuguese guy: Non-dre.

We all sit down on the futon, but its large enough that we're not cramped. Andre tries to keep the conversation on love, but we all manage to make it an upbeat discussion and do our best to change the subject to avoid losing Andre to depression for the night. We aren't saying anything particularly important or intelligent, but it's just one of those empty conversations that can go on forever. The only thing that stops it is that Andre spots an acoustic guitar ticked away under the reception desk. He asks the Tunisian if he can use it.

"Yeah, you guys can play the guitar, but just keep it down, yeah? It's after 2," he says.

How does he think guitars work?

Andre serenades us with beautiful melodies and Portuguese lyrics that I know in my heart do not make any sense and he must be making up as he goes along. We take turns buying rounds at Andre's request, and we put up with his singing and his empty demands to go back out to a club. After an hour or so of nothing remarkable, a couple of Dutch guys walk in, backpacks in tow, fresh from the Sziget festival in Budapest. They look as worn out as I am.

Andre stops playing his guitar to address our new guests. He stares them down for a moment, confused as to whether or not to trust these men. Men, after all, are the same competition he will face when it comes to winning back his girlfriend. But not these men, he decides. They pose no threat, and he extends the olive branch.

"Do you gentlemen wish to join us and lament the loss of love while celebrating the beauty of hope for things to come?"

He's dead serious, but even the suaveness of his Portuguese accent and his surprising knowledge of English vocabulary don't make it seem any less ridiculous.

"Sure," says one of the Dutch guys.

"Yeah, let us just put our bags away," joins the other.

"It's after 3. You can join them, just make sure to keep it down," we're reminded.

They're back in a heartbeat, doing their own shots of Jagermeister as quickly as possible to catch up. Soon all six of us are crammed on the futon. One of the Dutch guys takes over guitar duties. Andre continues philosophizing on romance. He isn't saying anything profound or even anything original. And, if it was anyone else doing it I would be sick of hearing about love all night. But, Andre's accent and mild impairment make it not only bearable, but almost poetic. Our still unremarkable conversation goes on for another hour, and then Andre stands up.

"I need some air. I need a cigarette," he says.

"You don't smoke," rebuts Non-dre.

Andre doesn't listen and heads outside. The group joins him.

"It's after 4," the Tunisian says as we walk outside. "We've got neighbors, so keep it down."

We sit on the stoop in front of the hostel, all of us smoking but not enjoying the Welshman's cigarettes that he has generously forced on us. Andre looks over at the Irish Pub we were not admitted entry to earlier in the evening. It's still open, and a couple of people are out on the patio having a smoke.

"They look like they are having fun," Andre says. "That will be the club we go to."

"It's a private party," says Non-dre, "It's not even a club."

"We need to get in," says the Welshman, not helping the situation.

"Let's go," Andre decides.

Andre gets up and heads to the pub. The rest of us have no choice but to follow, and maybe deep down we all want to try to get in too. We walk up to the short fence that surrounds the patio. There's a guy and a girl, mid to late twenties, sitting at a table.

"Hey," Andre says to the guy, "is there room at this party for a few more?"

The guy doesn't respond, but says something to his lady friend. He's pretty quiet, but I distinctly hear the word "vamanos."

Non-dre hears it too.

"Hablas Español?" Non-dre says, knowing some Spanish himself, "Queramos—"

The guy looks right at us and says maybe the only thing he knows in English.

"Fuck you."

The couple walks inside and locks the door. We know it's locked because Andre and the Welshman can't open it after they jump the short fence to try to follow them in. Dejected, we walk back to the hostel.

"Hey, where'd you guys go?" asks the Tunisian.

"We tried to get into the Irish Pub. They wouldn't let us in."

"Yeah, some footballer is having a party there. An Argentinean that plays for the Zagreb club," The Tunisian tells us.

"I think we might have met him," I say.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah, he told us to fuck off," Non-dre clarifies.

That's when things get weird.

The Tunisian stands up. It's the middle of Ramadan, and this guy has spent the last two weeks fasting, and he still has a couple weeks left. He's never had sex or a drink in his life. He left Tunisia to work night shifts at a hostel, and in his first month away from home he missed his country's historic revolution that kicked off the Arab Spring. Everything about this guy makes him a prime example of someone who needs to vent some anger, and this seemingly insignificant event must be what pushes him over the edge. He transforms right in front of us.

"What the fuck?! He told you to fuck off?! No one tells my fucking customers to fuck off! Is he still there?"

"He went inside and locked the door," Andre says.

Our concierge jumps over the desk and storms out the door. And I need to be clear, it's just a regular desk, not some wraparound counter that has him boxed in; it would have been both quicker and easier had he just walked around it. As soon as the Tunisian is outside, the Welshman wisely takes the opportunity to grab the Jagermeister bottle and pour us all a shot. And another shot. Then we all run outside to see what the Tunisian is doing.

We barrel out the door to see him hopping the short fence around the patio of the pub.

"You tell my friends to fuck off?!" He screams as loud as he can to absolutely no one.

He starts banging on the patio door. No one answers. So he starts kicking it. Hard. Like he wants to break the thing down.

_Jesus, he's the only sober person here! How is_ he _the surly one?_

We all run across the parking lot to try to talk some sense into him.

"They're not opening the door," he yells, "they're fucking scared!"

_They_ should _be scared. You're a maniac._

"No, it's pretty loud, they might just not hear you," we tell him.

"No, they're scared," he responds.

He keeps kicking. The door is shaking violently. It's only going to be able to withstand a few more kicks before it flies open or comes off the hinges.

"Fuck you guys!" He screams at the door before turning to us and cracking a smile that makes me truly doubt his sanity, "They're so scared!"

Part of me wants nothing more than for him to break the door down. This is probably the closest I'll ever come to storming a castle, and maybe there's a line of people ready to defend the shaking door from intruders. Or maybe no one even notices the shaking door, and if it's kicked open, we'll be able to sneak inside and see what we've been missing out on all night. Whatever the case, if the door opens, something exciting should follow. However, a different, more rational part of me knows it's not a good idea to go looking for trouble at 4:30 in the morning in Eastern Europe. And no part of me wants to end up in a Croatian prison.

"Yeah, they're scared." we say, trying to appease him. "You showed them."

"Yeah, I did. Let's get out of here," he says, as he hops the fence out of the patio.

Good idea, psycho.

Have you ever been out in a public place when you break something you shouldn't have been messing with? You know that fast-paced, silent walk you do to get as much distance as possible between yourself and the evidence? All seven of us simultaneously begin doing that walk for about 3 seconds, until it gradually grows into a jog, and then an all out sprint back into the hostel. Once we're inside we decide that we don't want to risk being around the reception guy any longer, especially if there's a chance that someone in the club called the cops.

We all begin saying goodnight in hushed whispers to make up for the last three hours of noise. As I feel the hot, breathy voices against my face, I realize that Andre was right all along—after doing those shots, everyone's breath smells like anus. We all separate to our respective rooms. I walk down the hall, through my door, and to my bed.

"Have a good night?" one of the Australian girls whispers as she hears me climbing into the bunk above hers.

"You'll have to keep it down," I say, "It's almost 5."

I know this line seems corny and stupid, but I swear to you it's hilarious at the time.

# Being American

The War in Iraq. The Imperial Measurement System. Poor education standards. High income disparity. Electing George W. Bush. Reelecting George W. Bush.

America's perfect.

Still, and I'll need you to sit down for this one, there is some anti-American sentiment in other countries. Don't get me wrong, most people are great, and considering the amount of people you meet, those who will be vocal about disliking Americans are a tiny minority. And the mere fact that anyone would hate you solely for your nationality means you probably don't want to hang out with the racist asshole anyway. Actually, is that even considered racism? Or is it Xenophobia? Jingoism maybe? Regardless, the point is that they're some sort of bigot,[31] and their opinion shouldn't hold much weight. And since it's so easy to ignore them, it's never really bothered me too much when people don't like me for being American. It's when people insult America itself that I get a little pissed.

Actually, let me put some qualifiers on that. I'm not some red-state uberpatriot that thinks the US is above criticism. In fact, as a well informed American citizen, I understand a lot of the problems facing my country, and I probably have more criticisms of the US than a foreigner ever could. [32] It's really just one specific insult about America that gets under my skin. One critique that is repeated over and over, ad nauseam, that's somehow been ingrained in the world's psyche, despite a complete lack of merit. And while I know that nothing's ever really going to change the perception, I still feel the need to address it:

"American beer is shit."

All my life I've heard how bad American beer is, but I always viewed it as more of an opportunity than an insult. After all, I already thought beer was great, and I apparently wasn't even having the good stuff. I was so excited the first time I went to Europe. I wanted to experience all of those lagers and ales that were supposed to be so much greater than what I had come to know. So over the years, before and during my current trip, I've been to places known for their beer: England, Holland, the Czech Republic, and even the motherland of beer, Bavaria. And you know what I found out? It was all lies. Europe has some good beer, sure, but by and large it's on par with what we have in the States. And even the best European beer I've tried doesn't beat the best American beer I've had. I can't insult European beer, I mean it's still beer. It just doesn't live up to expectations. It's kind of like someone telling you that they've got the entire cast of _Ghostbusters_ showing up in full costume for your birthday. You'll tick the days off your calendar all month just waiting for the party. But when the time finally comes, the only person who shows up is Rick Moranis carrying a bag of marshmallows. It's still going to be a great party; you'll make s'mores and spend all night talking about what it was like making _Spaceballs_. But compared to what you were expecting? It's a disappointment.

"What are you talking about, mate? Maybe European beer doesn't knock you off your chair, but I've had Miller, Budweiser, and anything else I can get for $3 a pint. _All_ American beer is shit."

Nope. Sorry. You're not allowed to say that. It's not America's fault that other countries choose to only import our worst beers. Cheap beer is just that, cheap. It's the stuff reserved for college students, Dollar Beer Tuesdays, and hot summer days when you want both beer and water at the same time.

You can't go into a restaurant and say, "Hey, what's the shittiest thing you've got on your menu? Sounds awful, gimme two of 'em. But let them sit out and get stale for a bit. And if it isn't as good as what I'm used to eating anywhere else, then this whole restaurant sucks."

No it doesn't. Your choice sucks. Don't criticize a place for having a bad selection because you only know how to order the worst thing available.

America's a great country, but holy shit does it have its flaws. And certain assholes will always be able to find a reason to blame you for those flaws. But American beer is impeccable. Don't let anyone who's never ventured beyond Coors Light tell you otherwise.

# Rome

The Basics

_Food_ : Pizza that's freshly made, served piping hot, and using the best ingredients—none of that describes what they have in Rome, because Rome is known for _al taglio_ pizza, meaning "in the style of a middle school cafeteria." Giant sheets of mass-prepared pizza sit out on a counter, are chopped into bricks, and sold by weight. It's got all the excitement of day old pizza, but with the customer service of Italy; Mmmm, I bet you can taste that room temperature nutrient mass just thinking about it.

Public Transport

Rome is the largest city in Italy, a developed western nation. So the best way to appreciate[33] the Rome Metro System is to compare it to other rapid transit systems from the largest cities of other Western nations.

Above is a map of the Paris Metro. Wow. They have 16 lines running through the city, with just over 300 stations. Given that Paris has an area of 105 square kilometers, this gives them almost 2.9 stations per square kilometer. This is a phenomenal ratio, and should be considered the gold standard of public transportation, so don't look down too much on the other guys if they don't quite live up to this example. Pretty good, Paris.

This is the New York City Subway. Its 34 lines span 4 boroughs, starting on the mainland and spreading across multiple islands. Gee, this one is so complicated it almost makes Paris's Metro look simple. With over 400 stations, New York is able to offer about 0.35 subway stops per square kilometer. With an area over ten times larger than Paris, it might not be able to hit the same station density, but its reach is impressive nonetheless. Even in America, the country that hates public transportation, there is a darn good rapid transit system. Way to go, New York.

This is a map of the U-Bahn and S-Bahn, Berlin's rapid transit systems. Either the allied bombs didn't reach too far underground, or the SS had a secret army of mole engineers that allowed them to rebuild everything in a pinch. Either way, the resulting transportation system is downright impressive. With 339 stops in a city with an area of 891 square kilometers, it offers 0.38 stations per square kilometer. Great job, Berlin.

This is a map of the Rome Metro.

Slow down. Take it in. I know it looks complicated, but if you look closer I'm sure you'll be able to figure it out. See, there's a line. And then there's another line. There are two lines. Also, they cross each other. See where they cross? So if you need to transfer, you can do it there, at the only transfer station in all of Rome.

With an area of almost 1300 square kilometers, and a mere 47 stations, Rome has a density of 0.037 Metro stations per square kilometer, a mere fraction of any of the prior mentioned cities. And if you're going directly North, South, East, or West of the main station? Too bad, because the trains aren't.

This really is an embarrassment. Rome is an affluent, well-known city that draws tourists the world over. It's the flagship of Italy, and maybe all of Southern Europe, and yet I can't help but think that the conversation at the mayor's office went something like, "Look, I know we're bigger in area than Berlin and New York, and we positively _dwarf_ Paris, but why do we need to reflect that in our public transport? How about we throw a line here, and a line here, and let's get lunch."

Just comparing this map to the others kind of reminds me of walking around the science fair and coming across the embarrassed kid who didn't put enough effort into his project. You've already seen a homemade battery, a baking soda volcano, and a mouse go through a maze, and then you get to Ricky Roma's display—just a potato in a jar of water with a sign that reads: _Germs?_ He's hoping you don't notice how bad it is while he tries to distract you.

"When my grandpa did this fair at my age he made a scale model of a Colosseum that I could show you, it's a little broken now, and I'd have to charge you $20. And my dad made a walled-off city where the leader of our religion lives, that's kind of—"

"No one cares about what your ancestors did, Ricky! Your project sucks, your cooking is overrated, and you owe everyone money!"

Rome is a beautiful place. There are massive archaeological remains throughout the city, breathtaking buildings that are centuries old, and plenty of worthwhile museums that highlight Italy's revolutionary Renaissance art. But their Metro is a reminder that no one goes to Rome to experience anything they've accomplished in the past hundred years.

# Intermission

I go through airport security, take a valium, and wake up in Asia.

# Mai Chau

Vietnam is a country we only know about from war movies, History class, and that one episode of _Top Gear_. The Vietnamese district of Mai Chau was not relevant to any of those, which is why I had never heard of it.

The Basics

_Currency_ : The currency in Mai Chau, and in all of Vietnam, is the Vietnamese Dong. It is notably weaker than other Asian currencies such as the Chinese Wang, the Japanese Knob, and the Malaysian Rod, making Vietnam a very inexpensive country. The exchange rate is about 20,000 Dong to the US Dollar, meaning it's not uncommon for someone to handle millions of Vietnamese Dong in a single day. I've personally blown through more Vietnamese Dong than I could ever count.

_Postwar American Sentiment_ : Remember when the US bombed Northern Vietnam for almost a decade, killing over a million people and doing untold damage to the ecosystem? Apparently they don't. The Vietnamese are some of the most welcoming people I've ever met. Even more so if you're giving them your Dong.

Tourists

I've booked a spot on a small private tour to the mountain district of Mai Chau, a few hours outside of Hanoi—the tour consists of transport to and from the district, along with accommodation at a homestay, where I'll be staying with a family.

We get to Mai Chau around noon. We descend into a valley that's spotted with villages which surround a small town in the center. We drive through the town and head to the village where we'll be staying. There are six of us, a young married couple from L.A., two girls from Hanoi, a British girl named Emma, and me. We reach our homestay, meet the family hosting us, eat lunch, are taken on a bike tour of the valley, and are back by 5:00.

Emma and I were the only ones who booked an overnight stay; the others didn't really grasp the frivolity of driving four hours each way for a five-hour visit. So, as those four load into the car to go back to Hanoi, Emma and I get ready for dinner.

"You want drink?!" our host mother asks, about 15 decibels too loud.

"Sure," says Emma.

"Drinks in fridge! Water 8,000 Dong! Coca-Cola 10,000 Dong! Beer 18,000 Dong!"

Emma and I each have a beer while waiting on dinner, and stand near the road looking around the village. All of the houses are elevated 10-15 feet in the air on posts, similar to what you see in a beach town. The homes all seem to be inhabited by locals, but you can tell that, on this street especially, they are trying to cater to tourists. The house directly across from us has turned the open area under their home into a general store, selling cigarettes, candy, souvenirs, and anything else that Westerners buy a lot of. Half of the homes on our street have some sort of sign that reads "Homestay," although it seems like none but our own has any guests, and the signs are just wishful thinking—farmers hoping to make some money from the occasional traveler spending the night. Our own homestay has a separate room for travelers, with six mats set out on the floor as beds, and even though only two of them will be filled tonight, I still get the feeling that it's a busier night than usual. We had seen a group of tourists standing by a charter bus earlier in the day, but besides that group and a hotel in the nearby town, Emma and I might be the only foreigners in the entire valley.

"What do you reckon the elevated houses are for?" Emma asks me.

"I'm not sure. We have houses like these in the States, but they're in areas prone to flooding. I'm not sure what it's for in the mountains."

It's starting to get late, the sun has just set, and we are both starving after the bike ride. Our host comes out of the kitchen, apparently sensing our hunger.

"You want chicken or pork for dinner?" she asks.

"Chicken," we both agree.

Our host smiles and walks around to one side of the house. She comes back 20 seconds later with a live chicken in her hands. It's scared, squawking, and trying to escape her grasp. She walks into the kitchen, the only part of the house that isn't elevated on stilts, and comes back out a second later, with the chicken in her left hand and a cleaver in her right. She walks around to the other side of the house just out of view, and we hear a loud _clunk._

"Dinner in about 45 minutes!" she yells.

Once the shock wears off, we continue discussing the village we're in. But just a few minutes later we're distracted when the village's power goes out. The instant it happens, we hear a roar from up the street, a collective "Oooooooohhhhhhhhhhh" from a large group of people. But in only a few seconds the lights come back on and their laughter and noise is quieted.

"Where do you suppose that noise was coming from?" Emma asks.

"No idea," I say.

The two of us get up and walk down the street to where we had heard the roar. About 75 meters down the road we find a huge group of Vietnamese people, probably about 60 in total, all sitting under one of the elevated homes. Almost all of them are between the ages of 20 and 30; they're clustered in small groups of about ten people each, sitting on the ground around short tables, eating dinner and having drinks. One man looks up and sees the two of us. Then he starts waving us over. A few others at his table look over and see us too, and in a moment everyone at his table is waving us over until we join them. When we sit down, they offer us food, water, and alcohol.

"What is it?" we ask them when they hand us the shotglasses.

"Rice wine," one of them says. Only a couple of them speak any English, but the whole table is still listening for our response.

"Rice wine?" Emma confirms. "Okay."

.

Upon hearing her agreement, it becomes clear that Emma doesn't realize what we're about to drink. Or rather what we aren't about to drink. Because it's sure as hell not wine. It's hard liquor distilled from fermented rice. I assume that after a poor translation probably dating back to French colonization it has since earned the relatively harmless-sounding misnomer of "rice wine."

.

They pour us each a shot, we throw it back, and it burns all the way down. This is some of the nastiest stuff I've ever tasted. There's no way it's a commercial product, and was probably made in someone's bathtub. We're getting along with our hosts, and are enjoying ourselves, but we have yet to eat dinner, and the reality that we've already done a shot is not lost on us. We're polite and do our best to make conversation, but after about half an hour we excuse ourselves to go back to our homestay.

"We need to go eat dinner," Emma tells them.

"You can eat with us!" one of them suggests.

"No, we're staying over there," she says, pointing in the direction of our homestay. "It would be rude if we don't go back for dinner."

We go back to our place, and our host sees us from the kitchen.

"Dinner almost ready!" she yells again as she comes out to talk to us for a moment. "You want another drink?"

"No thanks," Emma answers for both of us, and then follows up with a question of her own, "but could you tell me, why are the houses all elevated? Why are they up high?"

"Tigers!" our host smiles and nods her head quickly as she responds, and then starts turning to go back in the kitchen.

"Tigers?" Emma asks before the woman gets the chance to walk away. "There are tigers here?"

"In the past. No more. Have not been any since I was little girl. We kill them all!" she says proudly. I don't know if I've ever heard anything so comforting, yet so depressing, in all my life.

Our hostess leaves and comes back. Her hands are full of plates, and she puts them down in front of us. She then walks back into the kitchen to eat her dinner as she watches an old black and white television, and Emma and I realize we won't be eating with our host family. We had assumed we would be, especially considering that this woman has just lined our table with more food than the two of us could ever eat in one sitting.

.

When the two of us finish every last bit of the food, our host grabs the dishes, washes them off with the same hose she'd used to wash away the chicken's blood only an hour or so ago, and goes to bed.

There's not a lot to do in a small Vietnamese village at night. The closest thing to nightlife we had heard of was the opportunity to pay 500,000 Dong for traditional Vietnamese dancers to swing by our homestay and perform traditional Vietnamese dances. When it was offered to us this afternoon, it sounded like one more disappointing tourist trap to suck money out of foreigners, so we had declined. But now, as we sit alone in a dark village, we're honestly wondering if we made the right choice. It's only about 8:00, but with no natural light and just a single bulb's worth of manmade light, we've only got one bit of hope before admitting that the night is over.

"You think they're still out?" Emma asks, referring to our friends from up the street.

"Hard to tell," I say.

A moment later the power flickers off again, and in the distance we hear another audible "Oooooooooooooooooohhhhhhhhhhh."

Without saying a word we both jump up and walk back up the road. They're all still sitting under the house. The same group sees us again and waves us back.

"You came back!" one of them says excitedly. A couple of his friends start pouring shots for the table. We all do a round. And another. We learn that the group of people sharing the house all work for the same company in Hanoi, and this is their team retreat. One of the guys we've been speaking to is The Boss. Not the real boss, but the highest ranking guy that doesn't get to go on the better retreat with upper management. He's the oldest of all the people we're talking to, probably in his early 40s, and he has the best understanding of the English language. For the next 45 minutes we have simple but entertaining conversation, while our hosts keep trying, sometimes successfully, to get us to do shots. A little time passes and the group starts to break up as everyone begins going upstairs and into the house. But before they all leave, The Boss invites us to join them.

When I stand up to follow everyone, I feel a little buzz, but I am surprisingly still with it. I've just eaten a huge meal, so that handful of shots is being kept at bay as Emma and I head upstairs and go inside the house. There is just one big room, and we see everyone again breaking off into small groups, only this time, it isn't around tables, it's around clay pots. Each pot holds some sort of alcohol, and has about 10 thin reeds sticking out for use as straws. Before drinking, the alcohol in the pot is mixed with water, so the final product is a drink of completely unknown strength, but probably no stronger than beer, or wine at the worst. We're invited to sit down with one of the groups around one of the pots, and everyone in our group grabs a reed. We chant in unison, "Mot, Hai, Ba, Do!" Which means "One, Two, Three, [I couldn't tell you. I don't speak Vietnamese.]!" Then everyone drinks. The goal is to keep drinking from the straw as long as possible. Whoever drinks the longest without stopping becomes "vo dich," or champion, until the next round, when the vo dich has to defend the title.

.

After an hour and who knows how many rounds, I have won and lost the title of "vo dich," Emma has called it quits, and just about all my new friends are getting visibly flush in the face when the game is broken up. The Boss stands up at the front of the room near the door and gets everyone's attention. The room gets quiet, and the group listens intently. The Boss speaks in Vietnamese, and when he's finished, everyone on the other side of the room gets up and moves to the side I'm on.

"What's going on?" I ask The Boss as he walks by.

"They're going to dance," he says.

In walk 16 dancers, 8 guys and 8 girls, all dressed in traditional Vietnamese clothing. It looks like The Boss had taken the offer to hire the Vietnamese dancers. Fortunately for Emma and I, we get another chance to see them, after initially deciding to turn them down.

Unfortunately, it turns out that Emma and I had made the right choice to begin with, because the dancing is more boring than a Women's World Cup championship. I mean, I'm watching a free show as an invited guest so I can't really complain, but it's still classical dancing, and I can only appreciate it so much. It's like ballet, but without the revealing clothing or feats of extraordinary pain, and with a 90s era boombox playing the weird string music you hear at Chinese restaurants. Given the atmosphere and company, I can't say I'm bored, but the dancing is about the only thing in the room that I don't find fascinating. That is until the sticks come out.

The last dance of the evening is a pole dance. Not that kind of pole dance, this is one that your mom isn't an expert on. All 16 dancers kneel on the floor in two parallel rows of 8; the two rows face one another, with about six feet separating them. Each dancer holds one end of a long pole in each hand, and their counterpart in the other row holds the other end of the pole. So there are a total of 16 poles that go across from one row to the other, making a sort of gridiron.[34] Music starts playing and it's in triple time, meaning the beat is a simple 1-2-3, 1-2-3, similar to a waltz. The dancers start to beat the poles with the music. On the "1" beat, they clap the poles together, and on the "2" and "3" beats, they smack the poles against the ground, about two feet apart.

This isn't really a dance.

I'm half right. It isn't a dance for the dancers; it's a dance for the audience. A few of my new friends join in, dancing in between the poles, trying to move across the gauntlet without getting their feet hit when the poles are clapped together. No one is doing a very good job of it. I'm pretty certain I can do better. At least I hope I can, because everyone is insisting Emma and I join in. So I get up, realize just how much I've had to drink, and make my way to the dance floor.

I'm sure to focus on the rhythm and the motion of the poles so that I can avoid the sticks when they clap.

Clap, 2, 3, Clap, 2, 3, Clap, 2, 3.

I get confident in the rhythm and move to join in.

Jump, 2, 3, Jump, 2, 3, Jump, 2, 3.

I'm doing it. I'm actually doing it very well. A few people are bumping into me, but I'm larger than them, so they don't have much impact and I'm able to keep my balance. I'm going back and forth across the gridiron, and maybe even getting a little cocky, but I remember to keep my eyes down to the ground and watch the poles. After making it back and forth about three times, I try to make it across again, only this time with the intent of getting across as quickly as possible. So, eyes down and feet ready, I jump in. The poles clap as I jump to the next set; they clap again as I time my jump perfectly once more. Still staring at the ground, I wait for the next clap, make my next jump, and realize that someone else's feet are on the ground, exactly where I'm planning to land.

.

Before I go any further, I think I need to inform you of my size. I'm 5 feet 11 inches tall, and weigh about 185 pounds. I am not an extraordinarily large man by Western standards, but compared to the typical Vietnamese person, where men average 5'4" and women 5' even, I'm practically an NFL lineman. I am without a doubt the tallest person in the room by at least 4 inches, and have at least 30 pounds on anybody there. So when I noted earlier that "a few people are bumping into me, but I'm larger than them, so they don't have much impact and I'm able to keep my balance," I should have also noted that if I was the one bumping into them, the outcome would not be as simple.

.

There aren't a lot of options when you're mid-jump and about to crash into somebody else. All I can do is look up and hope that I'm not about to land on a 90 pound, 5 foot tall woman. But before I can, I have already collided with a 90 pound, 5 foot tall woman. In most cases, you can look at Newton's laws of motion and assume how this collision ends. Newton, however, never accounted for the fact that there are poles lining the floor and half a dozen other girls dancing right behind this one.

In an instant, I've gone from dancing to bowling. I take the first girl right into the girls behind her, and I'm able to take those girls into a couple of guys right behind them. Although a few of the outer pins do get knocked to the floor, most of us stay upright, in a mushed-up bunch of about six or seven people. Adding insult to injury, the dancers holding the poles just keep clapping on our legs.

Everyone takes it pretty well, even the girls on the ground are laughing, but before I can try to pick up the spare, the song ends and the dancers stop with the sticks. I help the girls up, and the dancers inform us that they have just finished their last song and their routine is over. The actual dancing, however, has yet to begin.

When the professional dancers leave, The Boss plugs in a stereo, starts playing some Asian electronic music, and turns on a flashing neon strobe light. Everyone in the room acts accordingly. The last thing I expect to see in a quiet mountain village in Vietnam is a techno dance party.[35] Emma and I have little choice but to join in. Someone turns off the lights and, other than the strobe light, the room is completely dark. It actually feels like we're in a club. The weirdest goddamn club I've ever been to, but a club nonetheless.

At midnight The Boss turns all the lights on and shuts off the music, announcing the end of the night. Emma and I excuse ourselves, and are given a sincere goodbye from everyone there before we go back to our homestay.

.

Even though the night barely goes past 12:00, and we never strayed more than a block from our beds, this is one of the most memorable nights I've ever had. It's not too often that you get to party like that with the locals, even if the locals are just tourists themselves.

Mountaineering

The morning after the party, Emma and I wake up at 4:30. Not out of choice—it's just that we have nothing to sleep on but our respective mats, and there's some rooster that can't wait for dawn to start crowing. We try our best to get some more rest, but to no avail. We're a little frustrated—we both want a good night's sleep because one of the activities we have planned is a climb up one of the mountains in Mai Chau. Neither of us wants to climb a mountain with only four hours of shuteye.

Fortunately, we don't have to climb a mountain without any rest. It's not that we get back to sleep or anything, that rooster is a total prick all morning. But when we do get up and are led to the mountain, we see that we don't really have to climb.

"There's a staircase," Emma says to our guide when we get to the base of the mountain.

Yes, the Vietnamese government saw a mountain in all of its glory, and decided to cherish it by paving a straight path all the way to the top. I understand the irony of an American critiquing the destruction of Vietnam's natural beauty, but it really is a little sad. Although it is also pretty convenient, because the only thing between us and the summit is 1,200 concrete steps.

"Wow," I say, "No real climbing involved. I guess we didn't need that full night's sleep anyway," as we start our stroll to the top.

.

Fifteen minutes later, Emma and I are sitting down, desperate for breath.

"How much... how much longer to the top do you reckon?" Emma asks.

"I... I'm not... not sure... maybe about 900... 1,000 more steps... How tall are 1,200 steps anyway?" I wonder aloud.

And that's a really good question. One I wished I had looked up before the climb. Because, as it turns out, 1,200 steps is so much higher than it should be. As high as a mountain, in fact. Obviously, there is no universal size for a step, but I feel confident in saying that these steps, although not consistent in size all the way up, are pretty steep, and would work out to be at least a little taller than your average step in a building. So if we assume 16 steps per story, then 1,200 steps is about 75 floors up, or a little shorter than the Empire State Building. It doesn't seem too bad at first. Hell, King Kong climbed the Empire State Building in 10 minutes, and he didn't even stretch beforehand. But try thinking back to the last time you walked up five flights of stairs. You were probably a little winded by the end, and if you were with someone else, you can probably remember trying to hide the fact that you were taking such heavy breaths. Now imagine walking up 70 more flights right afterwards.

So we climb, and stop, and climb and stop. Although that's not even accurate; we step and stop, step and stop. And at the last step, when we get to the top and look down on the valley, the feeling of success one normally gets from climbing a mountain is just replaced with shame. Shame that I can be so tired from something as simple as a staircase. Although that shame is amplified about half an hour later when we start our descent.

Something I hadn't really been paying attention to on our walk up the mountain is the lack of a handrail. On the way up, the steps were high, sure, but if I tripped, I would just catch myself on the steps in front of me. On the way down, however, I have nothing but a steep, straight line of 1,200 stairs, many of them crumbling, worn, or completely missing, with nothing to hold onto. If I fall, it's a long trip to the bottom. And, given my history of clumsiness (e.g. last night's bowling incident), I know that falling is a real possibility, so I go first to avoid taking out anyone in front of me.

I walk the entire staircase like I walked across the stage at graduation, just repeating to myself the mantra, "don't fall, don't fall, don't fall." Just like at graduation, it works. But unlike my graduation ceremony from The North Delaware Wig Repair School and Junior College, I have absolutely nothing to be proud of when I'm finished.

# Canadians

"You're not living up to your Potential, America. You could be so much better. You're always getting into fights with those Middle Eastern boys, you don't care about your education, and your propensity for gun violence is frightening. Why can't you just be more like Canada?"

I can't help but feel like Canada is the kid that everyone knew growing up, whose sole purpose just seemed to be making you look bad. The Sid to our Tom Sawyer. He's not necessarily smarter or more talented, but he's just a little better behaved, and always manages to make himself look good in front of others. It gives him that air of superiority, like he's so much better than you, since all the other countries just looove Canada.

That's not to say I dislike Canada or Canadians, far from it. I've loved most of the Canadians I've met. It's just that Canada seems to get credit for being so much more mature and sophisticated than America. But the truth is, and this is the part that pisses us both off, Canadians and Americans aren't really that different.

"Yeah, aboat that. I'm sorey, eh, but I've got to go ahead and disagree with you there," Canadians will rush to say when they hear the comparison.

And, yes, maybe we're not identical; there are obviously some key variations. Our milk comes in gallon jugs, their melk comes in four liter begs. They think hockey is a major sport, we think that's adorable. Canada has had a Conservative Prime Minister since 2006,[36] while America hasn't had a Prime Minister in years. But beyond the superficial, there isn't a lot setting us apart.

Canadians will say that their political system and government are far superior to ours, that their electorate is better informed, and that their politicians have the freewill to make better policies outside the limelight of the American media frenzy. But I don't buy it. Both countries have smug urban liberals, both have insane rural rednecks. I'd venture that a person living in Saskatchewan has more in common with someone from Wyoming than they do with someone from Vancouver. So we can pretend that there are all sorts of subdivisions between us, but an arbitrary line separating our two countries isn't enough to separate our two cultures.

Still, Canada manages not to go to war, allow people like Newt Gingrich to have a voter base, or mispronounce the letter "Z." [37] And as long as that's the case, they're always going to look better than the US. But how does all this relate to travel? Because when you meet a Canadian abroad, they will never let you forget it.

That's actually a bit of an exaggeration. Like I said earlier, most people are great, Canadian or otherwise, and only a small minority of people will be mean spirited to you because of your nationality. But for whatever reason, a disproportionate amount of that hate is going to come from Canadians. I've lost count of the times I've heard Canadians rattle off all 50 US states and then expect me to do the same for both Canadian provinces—as if that knowledge gap is somehow proof of American arrogance and not proof that someone rattling off the names of 50 states has got to be somewhere on the spectrum. And if I wanted to retaliate, I could stoop right down to their level, and claim that Canada is just a poor man's California.[38] That Canadians have an inferiority complex since they're nothing but a punch line in American culture, a flappy-headed, poutine-munching, moose-loving, bad-music-producing, Gretzky-worshipping, Degrassi-infatuated society that can only feel validated by taking shots at Americans, and a century from now, in 2112, they still won't have accomplished enough to feel any different. But I won't do that, because:

a) Poutine is delicious. I would never speak ill of it.

b) Canada's a pretty cool country.

c) Despite their track record of Alanis Morissette, Celine Dion, Brian Adams, Shania Twain, Justin Beiber, and Nickelback, artists who absolutely ruin the spirit of radio, I can't help but feel that Canadians must have, even by accident, contributed something of value to popular music.

# Hanoi to Hoi An

Sans Plans

I've been in Vietnam for about 3 or 4 days when I leave for Hue. I've seen Hanoi and been to Mai Chau, but that's it. I decide to take a southbound train from Hanoi to Hue, and then make my way from Hue to Hoi An—or something like that, it gets confusing when each city's name pools from the same nine letters. I don't really know why I'm going to Hue and Hoi An, or what I'm going to do there, but the country of Vietnam isn't much more than a thin vertical strip, and these towns are just next in line on my one-dimensional path. It's one of the downsides to playing it by ear and not planning much—I've been in Southeast Asia for only a few days, and have met just a handful of people, so I don't really know where to go next. I hope that once I get to Hue I'll meet some people with advice or recommendations, and the picture will start to clear up.

Fervor on the Orient Express

6:30 pm

I show up to the station to catch a 7:00 pm train. It's just pulling in when I arrive, and I hop on board. It's an overnight train, and on the advice of a friend I've booked a sleeper ticket, giving me a bed in a semi-private cabin. I find my compartment, step inside, and see that I'm the first one there. The compartment is a 2 meter by 2 meter box with four beds—a lower bunk and a lofted bunk on each side of the cabin. I set my bag down and lay on the bed on the bottom right, hoping to fall asleep as soon as possible, but before I can even get comfortable, one of my cabin mates walks in, a German girl in her mid-twenties.

We introduce ourselves as she sets her things down on the bottom left bed. Four Questions. Her name is Andrea and she's a student in Bangkok. She's conservatively dressed, soft spoken, and although she's making small talk, she's pretty shy. I don't expect the conversation to go on for too much longer, but before it can dwindle, a couple of Australians, a guy and a girl in their late twenties, stick their heads in the door.

"Hello, we're Andrea's friends," chirps the incredibly perky girl.

"Hi," I say, starting to perk up myself, "are you in here with us too?"

"No," she says, "we're in the compartment next door. Do you mind if we hang out in here for a little while?"

"No, come on in," I tell her, happy that I might have a group of friends to spend the trip with.

They put their bags away in their room and sit with us on the bottom bunks, which have now become couches. Four Questions.

The trio I'm speaking with had just formed earlier that day. The Aussie guy and girl, Craig and Renee, know each other from back home and just met up that morning, and they met the German that afternoon. When they realized all three were headed to the same place, they decided to buy train tickets together.

"So you're all headed to Hue, then?" I ask.

"No, we're headed to a farmstay a few hours north of Hue. Middle of nowhere, apparently," Craig says in his dignified, yet happy-go-lucky voice. He sounds like an Australian Thurston Howell.

"A farmstay?" I ask.

"Like a homestay. But instead of staying at someone's home, you're staying at a farm."

"What's there to make it worth going so far out of the way?"

"It's near some National Park," Craig says. "They farmstay runs tours to the park and everything. It's pretty new and it's not in any of the guidebooks yet, so they should have some open beds. You should come with us, mate."

This is one of the upsides to playing it by ear and not planning anything.

"Sounds good, I'm in. When's our stop?"

"About 4 am. We've got someone from the farmstay picking us up from the train station. It's so early we figure we'll be better off staying up all night."

When I was nine years old, I spent the night at my friend's house, with the intent of getting up early to go fishing the next day. That was the first time I had ever decided to stay up all night instead of waking up early. And since then, I've attempted it dozens of more times. And while it has often succeeded in a technical sense, in that I sometimes do manage to stay up all night, it always fails in a practical sense, in that I am always miserable the following day. And yet for some reason, even though I've personally experienced the flaws in the methodology enough times for me to be certain that it's a bad idea, I still almost always convince myself that "this time it will be different."

"Makes sense," I say, "So what are we doing all night?"

Craig and Renee have come prepared for a night of staying up. They pull a few beers, a small bottle of vodka, and some soda cans out of their bags. We still have 15 minutes before the train leaves the station and, not wanting to be a mooch, I jump off the train and pick up some beer for myself from a concession stand on the platform. I'm back on the train in just a minute or two, and as I walk down the hallway I hear a high-pitched voice coming from my compartment:

"Wahswopping! Wahswopping! Wahswopping! Wahswopping!"

I come to the doorway of our compartment and see that it's Renee speaking to my new bunkmates, a middle-aged Vietnamese couple. They speak no English, which for a moment seems moot, because I'm pretty sure Renee isn't speaking English either. Then it clicks what she's saying:

We're swapping.

Renee and Craig are trying to trade beds with the Vietnamese couple, so that the four of us will be the only people in the compartment, and we can stay up without complaint. Renee takes the confused Vietnamese couple out in the hall and continues her proposition.

"Swopping! Swopping! Wahswopping!"

I'm not sure they completely understand, but they eventually relent, and it's the last we see of them. Renee comes back to our room, mixes a drink, and plugs a portable speaker into her iPod. She hits "play" and turns the speaker up to full volume.

"Hilltop Hoods!" she says over the music. "Bes' rappers in 'Stralia."

I recap the situation in my head. In a matter of 20 minutes, before the train has even left the station, I've gone from aimless and alone to having plans for the next couple of days and a few new friends, and have also helped turn our sector of the train into a portable nightclub.

The loud noise begins to attract attention in only a matter of seconds. And not in a bad way.

"You guys having a party?" asks an American as he walks by.

"Absolutely," says Craig. "Keen to join?"

"Let me grab some beer from the platform," he says.

"We're about to leave. Just have some of mine," I respond.

But before I can finish the sentence, he's already gone. About a minute later the train starts to leave the station, and he isn't back.

We all look at each other, but none of us says a thing. If the guy missed the train, it means he's probably lost his pack, and really all of his possessions. And none of us even caught his name, so there's nothing we can do. We try to put it in the back of our minds and change the subject. A few minutes pass, and we force some conversation, but we all still feel a little uneasy.

"So, uh, this farmstay... is it near that big cave I've heard about?" I ask, willing to say anything to keep my mind off the American's misfortune.

"Yeah," Craig says, "They run treks through the jungle, and—"

"Made it!" we hear from the doorway. We look up and see the American sticking his head into our compartment. He's holding a plastic bag filled with beer cans in his right hand, some small speakers in his left hand, and he's got two people standing behind him. "Hope you don't mind, I invited my roommates over."

"The more the merrier," I say, just relieved he caught the train.

Four Questions. The American guy is named Adam; his roommates are a Dutch couple. All three are headed to Hue.

"You guys interested in going to a farmstay?" Craig asks.

"Farmstay?"

Craig gives the same pitch he just gave me. The Dutch couple declines, they're catching a flight out of Saigon in a few days, but Adam is in.

Our three new guests and I each crack open a beer. Craig and Renee mix themselves another drink. Andrea just pours herself a cup of Coke.

"She doesn't drink or smoke or anything," Craig tells the rest of the car.

"Not too often. It's been a while since I've done anything like that," she adds.

"She's not an alcoholic or anything. She just doesn't drink very often," Craig amends.

"More for us," we all agree.

11:30 pm

"You're such a pussy!" Andrea laughs as she yells over the noise of the train.

"Why?!" I ask through my own laughter. I'm curious to hear her rationale, but I'm really just enjoying her enthusiasm.

"You went to a club in Berlin and you didn't even take Ecstasy! You're barely even a pussy! Because even pussies will still do Ecstasy in Berlin!" she says as she finishes her drink.

Over the past few hours, Andrea has decided to take a hiatus from her reserved lifestyle. She's been going drink for drink with Renee, and has smoked half a pack of cigarettes. She's shown us her tattoos—a half-meter dragon silhouette going up the side of her torso, and a handful of semi-tasteful others that she's been able to conceal with her conservative clothing. Now she's telling us about her not-so-conservative past.

"It doesn't even count as going to a club in Berlin if you don't have at least two illegal drugs in your blood."

Despite Andrea's excitement, the night is drawing to a close. The speakers that had been blasting hip hop are now playing a slow-paced Jamiroquai instrumental at a reasonable volume. The vodka bottle and the beers are all empty. The Dutch couple has already left to go to bed. Adam asks us to come get him if he doesn't wake up in time, and he follows the Dutch couple back to his compartment. Then Andrea excuses herself to use the restroom.

"Reckon it's time to get to bed," Renee says, conceding that getting a little rest is better than staying up all night.

"Have any more of those sleeping pills, 'Nee?" asks Craig. "They don't do much for me, but I'll never fall asleep on this train without one."

Renee hands him a pill and he drinks it with a swig of water.

"No chance you've got a stronger sleeping pill, have you mate?" Craig asks me.

"I've got some Valium that I take for flights in that bag next to you. Might be a bit too strong for a few hours of sleep, though," I laugh. I really don't have any sleeping pills to offer him, and even if I did, I would be reluctant to give him one since he's already taken a pill of his own on top of four hours' worth of vodka. "I'm sure with all the drinks you've had, you won't need anything."

I get up and go to the bathroom, too. When I come back, Craig and Renee are getting into their beds.

"Thanks for the Valium, mate," Craig says.

"Wait. You actually took a Valium?!" I ask with a firm sense of gravity, since I don't know what the other pill was that Renee gave him.

"Yeah, I figure this way I can get some shuteye before our stop. You've still got plenty left, though. Don't worry about that."

Valium, sleeping pills, and alcohol. I'm no pharmacist, but something tells me that nothing positive can come from that combination.

1:00 am

Craig is snoring. I think Andrea and Renee are asleep. I am not.

2:00 am

Still awake.

3:00 am

Still awake. Craig has stopped snoring. I am moderately confident he isn't dead.

4:00 am

Renee's alarm goes off. Everyone but Craig hops out of bed. I step into the hall to go get Adam, but halfway to his compartment I see him coming down the hall. Before we can even greet each other, our attention is turned back to my compartment.

"Cleggy! Cleggy!"

We both hurry back, and see Renee trying to wake up Craig.

"Cleggy! Cleggy! Cleggy, wake up!" She yells as she shakes him.

Craig isn't moving. I am somewhat confident he isn't dead.

"Cleggy, wake up!"

We all wait for a response, but we hear nothing save for the noise of the train.

"Cleggy! You have to wake up!"

"Iduhwana," he mumbles.

Not dead!

We have about 5 minutes until the train reaches our stop. Renee keeps working on Craig. Three minutes left until we get to our stop. Craig's still out of it. One minute. Craig still isn't up. The train slows to a stop.

"You guys go ahead. We've got a few minutes until the train leaves," Andrea says to Adam and me. The two of us grab our bags, walk down the hall, find a door, and jump onto the platform. We set our bags down and wait, listening to the mumbled yells from the tiny open window in the compartment.

"Cleggy! Cleggy! Cleeeeggggggy!"

I begin to look around. The train station has some buildings and houses surrounding it, but not much else. And considering that the Vietnamese government builds train stations in the center of the city, I can tell that we really aren't far from the middle of nowhere.

The yelling stops, but our missing trio doesn't come out of the door. And then the train starts to crawl away from the station. Adam and I stand there, watching the train pick up speed as it continues to pass us, amazed that we've been separated from our friends. And then I realize the bigger problem.

"Adam," I ask, "Do you have any idea where the hell we're going?"

Batting 1.000

"Adam! Ty!" We hear a voice from across the tracks after the train has completely left the station. We look up and see Andrea waving to us; she's with Craig and Renee, "Sorry to scare you. We got off on the wrong side."

After a quick 10-second panic, everything seems to work out fine. Better than fine. Less than a minute after Andrea spots us, Craig spots our ride, a guy who works at the farmstay. We jump in his 1960s era US Military Jeep, try not to think about how the vehicle was acquired, and are taken to our new home. It's just a couple of small buildings, but compared to the farms that surround it, the place is downtown Manhattan.

When you jump off a train in Vietnam at an unknown stop in the middle of the night with strangers you've just met, you don't expect a perfect outcome, because you don't even get a perfect outcome when you plan out every last detail.[39] But, through some miracle, this whole excursion goes off without a hitch.

Still...

Andrea has to hurry to catch a flight, and splits up with us when we leave the farmstay, but the rest of us find a driver to take us to the city of Hue. We check in at a guesthouse, drop off our bags, and by the time we sit down to dinner, Craig and Adam have already worked their magic.

"We've just rented us some bikes to get us to Hoi An. If we leave by 9:00 tomorrow morning, we can take our time and still be there by 3:00," Adam tells us.

I don't need much explanation from them. The new trend over the past few years has been tourists biking across Vietnam; travelers go from Hanoi to Saigon or vice versa on a motorcycle or scooter, buying it from a tourist on one end of the country, and selling it to a tourist on the other. When I first arrived in Vietnam, while waiting in Hanoi customs, I met a couple of Chilean guys who were doing just that. They asked if I wanted to join them, but as fun as it sounded, I had never driven a motorcycle, and I wasn't sure if I wanted to commit to two or three weeks on a bike with my backpack strapped to the side, so I turned them down. But now, in the large and tourist-heavy city of Hue, Craig and Adam have found us a company that caters to convenience. For not much more than a bus ticket, they will rent us a bike in Hue and throw our bags on a truck heading to Hoi An, where we can pick them up at the end of the day.

I know I just said that the journey from Hanoi to Hoi An went perfectly, but maybe I was being a little generous with my reminiscing when I made that claim. This isn't some nightmare everything-goes-wrong story, and without giving too much away, I should warn that I can't offer the travel story clichés of getting horribly lost or the bags never showing up. But, given that this is a book about travel, I feel like I'm not fully delivering, since I've written almost entirely about _being_ places, not going to them.

I guess that makes sense; I love being places, but I usually don't enjoy getting to them. Whoever said the journey is the most important part has never been crammed in a bus, standing room only, for four hours with a full bladder and no toilet. Occasionally you're traveling with a good crowd and in good circumstances, like when we all met on the train the other night, but that's the best-case scenario, and barely even counts as travel, more like hanging out while you happen to be moving. Motorbiking through Vietnam, though? It might be touristy, it may be unoriginal, but it's still real travel—reliant on you and your friends for navigation, forced to be aware of everything you pass, and not certain how it will play out.

.

The next morning the four of us gather in front of the hostel/restaurant/bar/travel agency/bike rental shop where Adam and Craig have reserved our bikes. We pay up front, hand over our bags, leave a 600.000 Dong deposit each, and we are shown our motorbikes.

"They're new," Adam says, a little impressed.

"They're automatic, too. I love it already," Craig adds, checking out his bike.

One of the men who showed us our bikes then begins to teach us how to use them. Craig and Renee are sharing one, with Craig driving and Renee on the back, so Renee stands to the side while Craig, Adam, and I receive a quick crash course, which is only a figure a speech for two of us. After 90 seconds, our trainer deems us full motorbike experts. He hands Adam a map, and pens out a route to Hoi An before Craig, Renee, or I can walk over to see it for ourselves. Adam puts the map away, straps on his helmet, and looks at us.

"Everybody ready?" he asks.

"Take the lead," I tell him.

"You ready, 'Nee?" asks Craig.

Renee jumps on the back of Craig's bike. "Let's go," she shouts.

Adam takes off. The street we're leaving from leads directly to a main drag that runs through the city. We follow that main drag for about 4 km, headed out of the city. Then we turn around, double back for a kilometer, and take a road out of the city, but now in the right direction.

There are a few things I should mention about Vietnamese driving. This should not be a surprise, but the roads aren't up to par with what we're used to in the west. Although there is a very fine on-ramp to a very fine one-lane highway in the city, by the time we reach the outskirts of Hue the highway has degraded to a strip of road about 10-12 feet wide, but sometimes growing wider or shrinking smaller. The strip is usually asphalt, but is sometimes gravel or dirt, and at any given point between 0 and 60% of the width is covered in rice, since the farmers use the road to dry their crops that they've harvested from the wet paddies.

Fortunately, traffic is light outside of the cities. The majority of the vehicles we see are other motorbikes, and when a car or truck does come speeding through we just steer to the edge of the road so it can pass us. Unfortunately, the traffic that does exist is barbaric. Driving in Asia isn't all too safe to begin with. Generally the rules are stick to one side of the road over the other, try to stop at red lights, and slow down when going around a sharp turn. Rules which aren't enforced by the government so much as they're enforced by Darwinism. But Vietnam is widely regarded as having some of, if not the absolute worst drivers in all of Asia. People have no problem passing on the left around a blind turn so long as they're honking their horn while they do it. There's the old joke about red lights being nothing but a recommendation in Florida, but it's a very literal belief in Vietnamese cities. And it seems like fuel efficiency takes precedence over human life, because truck drivers only apply their brakes truly as a measure of last resort. So every time we go to the edge of the road when a car or a truck speeds through, it's not out of kindness or respect for driving etiquette, but is merely in the interest of self preservation.

.

About 3 hours into our journey we are coming up on a mountain pass, and just before the mountain pass is a restaurant. Adam, still in the lead, pulls over to the side of the road.

"This is the mountain pass the guy warned me about," Adam says. "Once we're on it, we're on it. There's no shoulder and no getting off. The guy in Hue said it can take anywhere from 20 to 30 minutes to get through it—longer if there's an accident or bad weather. I say we stop here for lunch, take a break, and then get through the pass."

Adam, being the only one who's really looked at the map, is the only authority, so we all agree. We park our bikes and walk up to the restaurant.

Restaurants in bigger cities in Vietnam resemble those in America, in the sense that they often have menus and usually have tables, but remote restaurants on the side of a highway are crapshoots. This one we're especially wary of, because the only way it differs from the other houses we've seen on the side of the road is by the presence of a _Tiger Beer_ banner out front. It is, however, the only restaurant we've seen in half an hour, so if we want to eat we don't have much of a choice.

As we walk from our bikes to the building, we see that the restaurant is just a house that sells food to people traveling on the highway, which is about what we expect. Unfortunately, when we're greeted by a couple of women who speak almost no English, it's evident that they primarily target other Vietnamese people who use the road, not foreigners.

Now before you say, "Well, that just means you'll have some authentic Vietnamese food," I need to stop you. I love eating local food; it's one of my favorite parts of traveling—being the only foreigner in a restaurant and eating something that you can't find anywhere else in the world. But this is a roadside chow-lounge, it's the Vietnamese equivalent of a Denny's, but, and I mean this sincerely, without the high quality standards. What this place serves will be genuinely Vietnamese in the same way that an overcooked, reheated burger on a rubbery bun is genuinely American. So, when I say that it's unfortunate that they cater to locals instead of foreigners, what I mean is if food is going to be prepared poorly, I'd prefer it to be a poor version of a food that I'm used to.

The two women show us to a tiny table. By tiny I don't mean there's not a lot of surface area on the table, but that it's only about 18 inches off the ground, which isn't uncommon in Vietnam. Our chairs are proportionately short, and it's more like we're squatting with some butt support than actually sitting down. We each order a Tiger Beer, since, given the sign out front, it's the one thing we know they have.

They don't have it.

"No Tigah biya, only Ha Noi biya," one of the women says, and scurries off.

"Can we eat?" Craig says to the other woman. "Food?"

She looks perplexed. It's indicative of just how few English speakers they get here, since this is a restaurant, and she doesn't know the basic words "eat" or "food." Still, we're the foreigners, and it's our responsibility to figure out how to communicate. And that's when Craig goes to his backup plan.

Craig is one of the funniest guys I've ever met, but I don't think he's aware of just how funny I find him. He's not stupid, in fact I've heard him say some of the most poignant things I've ever heard, but he can be a little oblivious. Everyone gets culture shock, but while most of us take a step back to fully understand what we're dealing with, Craig jumps right in to acclimate. I wouldn't call what he does offensive, just innocent and maybe based in flawed logic. And right now, Craig wants to use his flawed logic to communicate with a woman who barely knows any English. And in his mind, a Vietnamese woman who barely knows any English and speaks in a thick accent would probably better be able to understand a thick accent. Craig tries to order again.

"We rike-ah awdah foo' prease," he says, completely serious, "you have-ah foo'?"

I'm not easily shocked. In fact, brash as it is, Craig's new accent is pretty much what I've heard for the past week, and if it weren't coming out of an Australian guy's mouth I wouldn't even notice. Hell, I'm just grateful that he doesn't squint his eyes while he does it. What shocks me is the woman's response.

"You wan' foo'? Okay! I make foo'," she says, smiling that she now understands him, before walking off to prepare something.

It worked. It actually fucking worked.

Over the next few days that I'm with Craig, he tries this accent a few times and it works on every single attempt. I never see anyone else brazen enough to try it, so I don't know if this is some magical ability of Craig's, if it will work for everyone, or if Craig just gets lucky. Still, I wouldn't have tried that in a million years, and Craig deserves at least some credit for figuring out a method that works.

The first woman comes back with four warm cans of Hanoi Beer, and four glasses, each containing one large block of ice. She pours the warm beer over the ice in the glass, and serves us our now-chilled drinks. Less than 10 minutes later, the woman who took our food order comes out with four bowls of rice, and sets them each in front of us, and then sets a large bowl in the center of the table. It's our protein for the meal: rubbery, partially ground-up squid. Or maybe eel, we can't decide.

The food isn't as bad as I expect, and considering all the weird food I've already tried over the past few days, this is just one more curiosity. The beer is awful, but that should go without saying, since I already told you that it's been served over ice. We finish the food, don't finish the beer, pay our astonishingly cheap tab, and we get back on our bikes to make our way to the mountain pass about half a kilometer away.

The mountain pass is a road that's been dynamite-etched into the series of mountains in front of us, and it's the only way to get to Hoi An unless we want to take a week-long detour through Laos. As we get closer to the first mountain, the road widens, and by the time we reach the base it's doubled in width, big enough to fit two 18-wheelers passing each other, assuming they're good at navigating sharp turns. We begin to climb the first incline, but it's so steep that our bikes can't go any faster than 30 km/hour. At the beginning of the pass, there are rock walls on either side of the road, but just a few minutes into the drive, as the incline begins to lessen and we pick up speed, the road curves and the rock wall to our left disappears, turning into a sheer cliff with sparse and incomplete guardrail coverage.

Thirty seconds later it starts to rain.

Remember how heavy I said the rain was when I was waiting for that bus in Amsterdam? This rain is just as bad, maybe worse. Because, geniuses that we are, we all chose to visit Vietnam during the monsoon season. But this isn't just any monsoon season. We'll later learn we were in the middle of one of the heaviest rainy seasons in history. Just a couple of weeks from now there will be some of the worst flooding Southeast Asia has ever seen, from Thailand to Vietnam. So, when you try to picture what we're driving though, imagine heavy monsoon jungle rain, only heavier.

Vietnam is a hot country, so the rain, although not exactly refreshing, is at least keeping us cool, and more importantly, not making us cold. It is, however, hurting visibility, and forces us to reduce our speed. There are few other motorbikes on the pass, but the ones we see have slowed, too. The occasional truck or car still speeds by, but they're rare enough that they're not much of a bother. I'm a little nervous given the amount of blind corners we're going around, but considering how empty the roads are, I realize there isn't much risk.

"I'm low on gas!" Adam yells after he slows down so that we're all alongside each other, "Gauge just dropped from half a tank straight to empty!"

"Same here!" Craig yells. "Let's hope we can make it through the pass!"

I look down to check my gauge, but I'm still showing over half a tank. I'm optimistic that it's accurate, but not so much as to take it for granted.

"Use just enough fuel to get to each peak," I yell, "and then try to coast down the hills!" I'm not sure if this will actually save any gas, but I feel obligated to contribute something.

We've been on the pass for about 15 minutes. We continue up and down peaks and troughs, although the lowest dip we hit is still pretty high up. And as we come around a blind corner, with the cliff still to our left, we hear a horn.

In Vietnam, horns aren't for venting frustration at assholes or signaling a drug deal, they're for passing. And when a car or truck or bus is passing on the left, they honk their quick, musical novelty horn that every truck in the country is equipped with: doo-doo-doo-doo, doo-doo-doo-doo. It sounds sort of like the theme to _The Twilight Zone_ , but a little quicker, and in a cheerier pitch.

As we come around the corner, we hear that same "doo-doo-doo-doo, doo-doo-doo-doo," so we all pull as far as we can to the right of the road without hitting the rock wall, and a bus careens past us in the opposite direction in the center of the road. We aren't so close to the bus that we're almost killed, there are still several feet separating us, but we're close enough to be completely terrified of all blind corners from this point on.

Thirty seconds later the rain stops. It might come down hard, but it does disappear quickly.

As we reach the next nadir, we see a man on the side of the road next to his bike. He's on the right side, safely sitting in a fairly large gap in the rock wall, about a 400 square foot clearing that sort of creates a natural rest area.

"Maybe he'll sell us some fuel!" Adam yells.

"Good thinking, mate!" says Craig.

We pull our bikes over to the side and walk them a safe distance off of the road and into the clearing.

Adam and Craig talk to him about gas while I appreciate the view. The man has been sitting next to a small Buddhist shrine that's been set up in the clearing. I don't know much about Buddhism, but I assume he's been meditating, and while he seems happy to see us I still feel a little bad about interrupting him. Across the road from the clearing is a cliff. Although it had been my nemesis while I was driving in the rain, now that I'm stationary I can see what I've been missing. In front of me are mountains covered in lush green jungle, and the recent precipitation has cast a massive band of color across the sky. There's the oft repeated question by Kermit the Frog asking why there are so many songs about rainbows. I've always thought it was kind of a bullshit leading question based on a flawed premise, since I really don't think there are many songs about rainbows, but after seeing this, I could totally understand if there were. I'm not one to get sentimental, but this is one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen. Although my mood drops when I realize why this guy is parked up here.

The cliff in front of us is only about half-covered by guardrails. I have little doubt in my mind that bikes, cars, people, maybe entire families, have fallen off the side over the years. Behind us is a Buddhist shrine. In America we set up crosses at the site of a crash to pay respect to those killed on the road. I have a feeling that this man, and this shrine, are here for a similar reason.

The man is genuinely friendly, and is more than willing to sell Adam and Craig some gas, at a fair price even, but he can't part with any more than a liter. My bike's gauge still shows about half a tank, so I tell Craig and Adam to share the liter between them. The man siphons some gas from his tank into a one-liter bottle, Craig and Adam pay him, and they split the bottle between their two bikes. Half a liter in a scooter will be enough for at least 20 km, even on these mountain roads.

The four of us don't take off immediately. We take a break, check out the view, and do our best to communicate with the man, if only through sign language. Between the overlook, the fuel, and the end of the rain, our spirits are all pretty high, so I don't ruin it by bringing up my theory on the shrine. But by the time we leave I think everyone has realized it on their own.

We continue on the mountain pass, and now that there's no rain we're finally able to appreciate the drive. And in another 5 minutes we're down on the other side, when, with no warning, my gas gauge drops from half a tank to near-empty. A little while later we reach a tiny gas station, and we all stop to refuel. The station is just a small shack with a sign out front that has some Vietnamese writing, and the word "Petrol" written out in English. There aren't any pumps.

"Do you have petrol? I need one and a half liters," I say to the kid sitting out front as I pull up.

He hops up and runs to a shelf lined with glass and plastic bottles. He grabs two old 750-ml liquor bottles, both of which are now filled with gasoline, and he runs over to my bike. I pop the gas tank and he pours one bottle in after the other. I'm not certain if this gas station's primary business if selling fuel or Molotov cocktails.

"I think we're almost to Da Nang," Adam says, taking out the map, "We go straight on this road for a while, then we've got to head through the city. We should all know where we're going in case we get split up in traffic. Then we just need to head in a straight line south until we hit Hoi An."

When all of our tanks are filled, we get on our bikes and continue on to Da Nang. In not much time at all we see the city on the horizon. The condition of the road improves as the city gets closer. After 10 minutes we're within the city limits, we have a wide and sturdy road underneath, and we reach the biggest bridge we've seen all day. It's not some gigantic feat of architecture, but it's still a proper steel suspension bridge with one lane going in each direction. Craig and Renee are in front, followed by Adam, followed by me, all of us spaced about five or six meters apart. Craig zips onto the left side of the road so we can pass a slow-moving truck. Adam follows Craig, and as I near the truck I do, too.

This is not the best decision I've ever made. I'm too concerned with following my friends and not concerned enough with checking for oncoming traffic. So rather than riding the median for a while and making sure the coast is clear, or just waiting until the end of the bridge, I've driven onto the left side of the road with nothing more than a quick glance. I wish I had hesitated a little more or a little less, because as it stands, when I'm halfway past this truck, I notice a second truck headed right toward me.

Craig and Renee have already made it in front of the truck we're passing. Adam has almost reached the truck's cab, and he twists his throttle as far as it will go to get past the truck and back to the right side of the road. I have three choices:

1) I can hit my brakes and hope I can get behind the truck I'm passing before the oncoming truck hits me. I'm not sure if I trust my front brake, and the bridge is still wet from the rain, so conditions for this aren't ideal.

2) I can head straight for the guardrail on the left side of the bridge. There's a walkway on the other side of the guardrail so there's no chance of going in the water, but the only way I can guarantee I don't get hit by the truck is to get as close to the guardrail as I can, which, at this speed will almost certainly result in a crash, causing minor, but repairable damage both to the bike and my flesh.

3) I can gun it. I don't have any guarantee of making it, but—oh, wait, I've already started gunning it because I don't have time for a rational weighing of the pros and cons.

I'm not going much more than 70 kph, but it's as fast as the bike will take me in such a short distance. The gap I'm aiming for is closing at a quicker speed than I'd hoped. I begin to think of Indiana Jones rolling under the closing wall, and become confident that I can make it between these trucks in time, because I neglect to remember that Indiana Jones is a fictional character. I'm not quite seeing my life flash by, which is probably for the best since it wouldn't be much more than a depressing compilation of Excel spreadsheets and _Simpsons_ reruns, but I know in my core that I'm facing true danger, and all I can do is keep on the throttle, and pray that the oncoming driver is hitting his brakes...

.

"So I'm following Craig and 'Nee around this big-ass truck on that bridge in Da Nang, and I see this other big-ass truck heading right for us. I know _I've_ got enough time to make it past, but I'm just thinking, 'Jesus, Ty, I hope you stayed back,'" Adam announces like a town crier, retelling the story to a few new friends a day or two later, "So Craig gets around the truck easily, but by the time I pass, the oncoming truck is _already_ a little too close for comfort. I get back to the right side of the road, and as soon as I'm sure there's nothing in front of me, I look back to see whether Ty waited to pass, or if he's just gonna be a red streak on some bridge in Da Nang. And when I turn around, right behind me are a couple of eyes the size of golf balls, and the biggest smile I've ever seen in my life. The crazy son of a bitch made it, and now he's laughing about it. No one smiles that big unless they just won the lottery or they just cheated death."

"Cheated death," may be an overstatement, but I don't exactly correct him, either.

.

The four of us make it through the rest of Da Nang and on to Hoi An without another problem. We drop off our bikes, are given back our bags and our deposits, and we find a guest house. We spend a couple of more days together until we split up to go our separate ways. I guess it's unfair to say that those few days, from the train, to the farmstay, to Hue, to Hoi An, were completely without incident. But, considering that I had no idea what I was getting into from the start, they're about as close to perfect as I could have hoped.

# Tuk Tuks

It used to be that every time I heard a girl complain about getting hit on at a bar, I would think to myself, "Wow, it must be tough to get all of that attention," and write it off as one more thing women complain about for no reason, like childbirth and sexism. But they might have a point on this one. Go to Asia and walk around a crowded city frequented by tourists. All of a sudden you're the girl, your foreign complexion is a revealing outfit, there are a couple of frat boys on every corner, and they all want to know where you're going. Welcome to the world of tuk tuk marketing.

Tuk tuks are the poor man's taxicab. Actually, the poor man's taxicab is probably walking. Tuk tuks are more like the easily exploitable foreigner's taxicab. They're the cheap mode of transport that's popular in most Asian countries, and range in style from motorized rickshaws, to a cart welded onto the back of a motor scooter, to just the bed of a pickup truck. They have limited purpose and limited ability. You need to go across the city? Not gonna happen. It's raining out and you don't want to get wet? You've get better options. But it's 3:00 in the morning, you only have $1.27 worth of local currency, and you're too drunk to either remember how to walk to your hostel, or just to remember how to walk? Find a tuk tuk driver. You need only to dig out the business card for your guest house, repeatedly point at the address while yelling "HERE! CAN YOU TAKE ME HERE?" and hop in. Odds are you'll be dropped off within 30 minutes, thoroughly not mugged (correct destination not guaranteed).

Considering that in the United States public transportation costs at least a couple of dollars and is usually packed, and that tuk tuks offer an actual cab service for about a buck, you'd think that they would sell themselves. And they probably would, but with a sales force as persistent as tuk tuk drivers, we'll never know for sure. Because while asking for a ride will certainly get you offers for a tuk tuk, you may also be propositioned to take a tuk tuk for any of the following reasons:

\- Not asking for a tuk tuk

\- Saying "no" when offered a ride in a tuk tuk

\- Being white

\- Stepping out of a tuk tuk just seconds earlier

.

They really haven't perfected customer profiling or efficient allocation of resources—which is more of a criticism of whatever MBA program these gentlemen attended than an insult to the tuk tuk drivers themselves. Their sales philosophy is to swarm every potential customer like the seagulls in _Finding Nemo_ , and harass them until they relent or the drivers spot a new lead _._ The following is a typical conversation you may have in any place frequented by tourists:

.

"I was thinking that—"

" _Hello, you want Tuk Tuk?!"_

"No. Anyway I was thinking that after we find—"

" _Tuk Tuk?! Where you going?"_

" **No**. Like I was saying, after we find something to—"

" _Hello, my friend! You need Tuk Tuk?"_

" **GO AWAY**!"

.

They don't quit. I get the feeling that the entire philosophy of pushy tuk tuk drivers is the result of one foreigner, once, changing his mind and asking for a tuk tuk a few seconds after declining one, and one driver, once, lost a sale. All the other drivers gathered together, mourned the travesty that was a lost sale, and collectively proclaimed "Never again." Now it's standard operating procedure to ask every foreigner at least three times if they need a ride.

In the US you can wait for 20 minutes or more trying to hail a cab driven by an Indian guy, despite being willing to spend $40. Meanwhile, in Mumbai you're constantly hassled by a swarm of locals willing to take you anywhere you want to go for just pocket change. The way I figure, somebody needs to put together a meeting between Radio Shack and the guys in charge of the Predator Drone program, because as soon as our remote control car technology advances to a stage where tuk tuks can be operated from overseas, we'll be looking at a fantastic business opportunity.

# Siem Reap & Angkor

In central Cambodia lies the town of Siem Reap, which works as base camp for tourists visiting Angkor. Angkor is a national park about 10 km from Siem Reap. It's home to dozens of temples, including the eponymous Angkor Wat, which is now considered the largest religious structure in the world, ever since the Catholic Church sold off their stake in The Bellagio.

The Basics

_Currency_ : Cambodia relies on the almighty dollar. Officially they use the Riel, but it's been so inflated that it's no longer the primary currency. The ATMs spit out dollars, all the prices are in dollars, and the Riel is only used for making change. This means that if you're an American, you can expect to be asked to explain the significance of the Presidents on all the bills.[40]

_Angkor_ : Obviously you've got to go see the temples while you're there. But just buy one day's admission to the park. Don't get fancy and buy a multi-day pass. As fantastic as Angkor is, you can see it all in one day. And that's good, because after that one day you will hate temples. The gullible suckers that buy the multi-day passes are wasting time and money by hiring tuk tuks to take them out to the park and spending all day seeing temples they don't even care about anymore.

_Nightlife_ : Pub Street. It's a street. With pubs. It probably dates back to the 1300s or something.

The Temples

I've heard countless times that the sunrise at Angkor Wat is the most beautiful sunrise in all of Asia. The monument faces east-west, and I've been told that when the sun comes over the top it's indescribable. [41] Still, I am not much of a morning person. I would be much more appreciative of sunrises if they would happen after it's already been light out for a few hours. In fact, I secretly hope that my friends will forget about the sunrise, and we can just go check out the temples at a reasonable hour.

.

"I just hired a tuk tuk to pick us up at 4:30 tomorrow morning. We should be at Angkor Wat in plenty of time for sunrise," my Dutch friend Tim says when we meet up on Pub Street.

Oh come on.

The "we" in question is Tim, myself, and my buddy Adam, the guy I met on the train in Vietnam. I ran into Adam again outside of Saigon, we both met Tim the next day, and we've been travelling together for the past week. Now Tim is staying in a hostel on Pub Street, and Adam and I are sharing a room in a guest house just a few blocks away. And we're all waking up dark and early to go to Angkor Wat.

.

The next morning my alarm goes off at 4:00 am, Adam and I get up, get dressed, walk downstairs, and see sheets of rain coming down outside. We go back upstairs to grab our ponchos, and go back downstairs to wait for Tim.

"Wait... sunrise?" I ask, still much too tired to open my eyes all the way, much less form a full thought.

"Yes," Adam says robotically.

"Rain no good. No sun," I say.

"Damn your caveman logic," he tells me, "maybe it'll clear up."

"It's a religious place. No better time to keep the faith," I say with a bit of hope.

The tuk tuk rolls up promptly 15 minutes late with Tim in the back. We pile in with him. There is plastic sheeting hanging down from the flimsy roof of the tuk tuk to keep some of the rain out, but it's a mediocre solution at best.

"Some of the roads are flooded," Tim yells over the roar of the engine and the sound of the heavy rain, "We have to take a different route. We should still be there in plenty of time, though. But if the rain doesn't clear up, we're going to miss the sunrise."

"Who would have thought this could happen during the rainy season?!" I yell.

"Keep the faith!" says Adam.

.

We get to the park gate and stop at the entrance to buy our passes. Adam tries to talk me into buying a multi-day park pass while we stand in line. We finish our purchases, pile back into the tuk tuk, and continue toward Angkor Wat. I start digging through my daypack for my poncho, but I can't find it.

"Are you looking for your poncho?" Adam asks.

"Yeah."

"I think it fell out of your bag," he says.

"Huh?" I reply.

"I saw something fall out of your pack before we left the guesthouse. I meant to tell you," he explains.

"You're a dick," I laugh, "Guess it's gonna be a wet day."

Not a minute later we drive past four guys standing on the side of the road, all of them selling ponchos. We try to tell our tuk tuk driver to slow down, but the rain and the engine are so loud that he doesn't hear us and speeds right past. But that doesn't deter one of the poncho salesmen. He starts chasing the tuk tuk. Quickly.

"Wow, that guy is keeping up with us," says Adam as we watch the guy chasing us.

"Yeah... really well," Tim adds.

A few seconds pass. He's still keeping up. He's determined to catch us. He is either one of the fastest people I've ever seen or we are in the slowest tuk tuk on Earth.

"Wow... he's, uh, he's still keeping up," Adam repeats himself, this time with a slight bit of worry.

"Yeah... it's actually getting a little scary now," says Tim.

"How does he even know that I need a poncho? We didn't signal him or anything," I add.

"Wow. That... that kinda makes it even scarier," says Tim.

We keep watching. He keeps running. I don't know if he's gaining on us, but we definitely aren't getting away from him.

"What's with this guy?!" yells Tim. I'm not completely sure if he's worried or just joking, but anything he says in his Dutch accent sounds a little silly anyway, so Adam and I start laughing.

"What does he want from us?! How is he still running that fast?!" screams Adam.

I debate kicking my friends out of the tuk tuk on the chance that one of them is John Conner and that the android will lose interest in us after it acquires its target. But before I can sacrifice the human race to Skynet for my own short term safety, we make it to our destination. The poncho salesman is right behind us, and I brace for termination, but he proceeds to not kill us with his knife-arms as he approaches the cab.

"Poncho, two dollars," he says before we even get out.

"I can't even haggle, man, you earned it," I tell him, and I hand him the money.

"You too!" the poncho guy insists as he points to Adam.

"No, I already have a poncho. It's served me well for two months!" says Adam. He then pulls the poncho out of his backpack, along with the foul stench of a moldy old poncho that's been stuffed in a bag for two months.

"Jesus, Adam, that poncho stinks," yells Tim with his Dutch subtlety.

"Seriously, man, are you sure you've only been carrying that thing around for two months?" I ask. "It smells like mold and dogshit. And the shit is from a dog that's been eating nothing but mold. And also that moldy dog—"

"All right, all right," Adam concedes before turning to the poncho salesman and digging two bucks out of his pocket, "I'll take a poncho, too."

Not 10 minutes after we buy the ponchos, the rain comes to a stop, because fate is an asshole. Even though it makes our purchases a little less necessary and means we'll have to carry around moist ponchos all day, it also means we might get to see the sunrise after all.

"Keep the faith," I say.

"And either way, at least the rain discouraged other tourists from coming out," Adam says.

To Adam's point, almost every picture I've ever seen of Angkor Wat has several hundred people or more sprawling across the massive temple grounds, but now there aren't more than a couple dozen people in view.

"It's barely even raining anymore. And we've got almost 45 minutes 'til sunrise. It could still clear up," Adam continues.

"Keep the faith," Tim says, finally joining in our optimism.

Sunrise is supposed to be at 5:59. By 5:30 there is enough natural light to see that the sky is full of clouds. By 5:45 we can tell that despite the end of the rain, the clouds don't seem to be going anywhere. Soon enough, [42] it's 5:58.

Now, I'm not a religious man. I don't really believe in any widely accepted sense of God or religion, I'm not even sure if I believe in any made-up hippie sense of God or religion. My "keep the faith" mantra up to this point has been nothing more than blind optimism to make the morning more enjoyable. But, just as we barely have any hope left for seeing the most beautiful sunrise in all of Asia, my watch hits 5:59, we all look up, and I know that I'll never forget what happens next.

Absolutely nothing. The clouds stay where they are, and any remaining hope of seeing the sunrise is ultimately crushed.

"Goddamnit," Tim says.

"Let's go get some breakfast," I console.

.

We spend the day seeing almost all of the temples. They really are amazing, and I mean that in the way that insane pastors use it. And given that it's the rainy season, some of them are flooded, just making them look even more impressive. The three of us see the temple where Tomb Raider was filmed. I almost make it through the Shrine of the Silver Monkey, but get caught by a temple guard. More people fill the park as the day goes on and it becomes clear that the rain has died out. The clouds never leave and we never see the sun that day, but after we climb the mountain at the center of the complex to stand atop a pyramid that gives a panoramic view in every direction for miles, the flooded temples give me one of the most fantastic views I will ever see in my life. No sunrise is ever going to beat that. Because sunrises are stupid. Please don't ruin my sour grapes.

Same Same but Stupid

There's a saying that your biggest regrets are the things you don't do. Try telling that to someone with herpes. We've all lamented a missed opportunity, but the biggest regrets out there are from people who took a chance and ended up wishing they'd just stayed home. Fortunately for me, the biggest regret of my trip didn't end in permanent injury or a life a shame. In fact, it wasn't even that big of a fuck-up, and as far as consequences go, I kind of got off easy. But that doesn't change the fact that it was not a good idea. It was a result of cockiness, impatience, and just overall stupidity. And it happened in Siem Reap.

.

My second full day in town is a Monday. I'm still with Adam. Tim left for Bangkok last night, and we've replaced him with Rachel, an American girl who Adam knows; she's living nearby at an orphanage where she volunteers.

It doesn't surprise me that Rachel is working at an orphanage. Over the past three months, I've met several people who have, at some point, volunteered at an orphanage. And the strange part is that 75% of the time, it has been an orphanage in or around Siem Reap. I must have met at least half a dozen former Siem Reap volunteers all across Europe and Asia. There's no explanation as to why there are so many orphanages here. Maybe they just truck orphans in from all over Asia, or maybe the temples give people spiritual guidance to help others, I'm not really sure.[43] What I know is that Adam and I are not immune to the spell, and spend the day helping Rachel with her kids.

At the end of the day, Rachel recommends a dinner place for tomorrow night as a thank you for our help. _Ecstatic Pizza_ , she explains, is a little food joint around the corner from Pub Street. Along with a handful of other restaurants on that block, they have a special menu item, a "happy pizza."

"'Happy?' So, does that mean they put pot on it or something?" we ask Rachel when she first brings it up.

"Yeah, I think so," she tells us. "I've only talked to one person that's been there, but he recommends it."

"That could be fun," Adam says.

We decide to meet her there at 7:00 the next night.

You should know that I'm not the biggest pot user. I rarely smoke, and when I do smoke, I don't smoke a lot. While traveling I hadn't smoked pot since Amsterdam, and that's only because as a tourist you're legally required to get high in Amsterdam. But my concern isn't really about having someone put pot in the pizza; it's what else they might add. Simply put, hallucinogens scare the hell out of me, and across Southeast Asia there are plenty of places that will gladly mix psychedelic mushrooms in with your food if you pay a little extra. Adam had recently tried mushrooms for the first time in Thailand, and does not want to relive the experience either. So the night prior to eating it, we use our connections to find out definitively what goes into a "happy pizza."

After 20 minutes of Googling, we find a handful of websites and forums that discuss the different places in Siem Reap that sell happy pizza, the most recently updated one being a little over 2 years old. The opinions are all over the place, from allegations of using fake pot, to saying that some places make it stronger than others, to confessions of getting incredibly high off the pizza. The consensus seems to be that _Happy Special Pizza_ is the most consistent place, although they all seem pretty reputable, and that all the places can be pretty light with their product, so to get your money's worth, one should make sure to order their pizza "extra happy." Ordering it "extra happy" doesn't cost anything extra, and it's not like they're going to give you more pot than you pay for. It's just a way to make sure they don't skimp. More importantly though, there is not a single claim of any of these pizza places using any drug other than marijuana, so even if we get ripped off and they give us nothing more than a pizza, we still won't get drugged with anything we aren't expecting.

.

We spend the following day, a Tuesday, at Angkor, seeing temples we don't care about anymore to justify our purchase of a three-day park pass. We have been joking about happy pizza as we've made our way through the park, and while it isn't constantly on our minds, the fact that it is being mentioned on and off all day really starts to get our hopes up about the place. We get back to town at around 6:00 that evening, change our clothes, and are anxious to go to meet Rachel.

When we get to _Ecstatic Pizza_ we are right on time, but Rachel is running a little late. Since the internet recommends we go to _Happy Special Pizza_ , which is just a few doors over, we figure we may want to move down there once Rachel shows up, but we decide to sit down and look over the menu while we wait. We ask the only other customer in the small restaurant, a white guy in his early 40s sitting alone, if the claims are legitimate.

"Yeah, great stuff. It'll get you pretty high," he says.

We decide we might as well try this place out. As we look at the menu again, we notice that they also have the option of "happy shakes." It's the same concept, but in a milkshake. We decide to try that. Besides, when you eat marijuana in food, it can take an hour before you feel it. Liquid, we reason, should be much quicker. Rachel is running late, so we go ahead and order without her. Adam asks for a banana shake, I get coconut, and both of us order them "extra happy."

Considering that we are the only people in the restaurant besides the white guy next to us, it takes them a while to bring our orders out. And before they do, a couple in their mid-20s walks in and heads toward the counter.

"Have you guys ever been here before?" we ask as they walk by.

"No, this is our first time. You guys?"

"Same. Have you heard anything about the place?"

"Not much. But we're buying a bag," says one of them. "You can check it out if you want."

They place their order and take a seat at the table catty-corner to ours. We make small talk between the tables for a couple of minutes until our shakes came out. They're in small glasses, about 8 ounces, and they won't take us long to finish.

"It definitely looks like there's something in here. Maybe they left the seeds in. I don't know, I guess it could be anything," Adam says, examining his milkshake.

"Yeah, I mean, I can't taste anything, but if they did it right I shouldn't be able to," I follow up after taking a sip.

As we work on our shakes, the couple waits for their bag. As soon as they get it, they bring it over to us.

"Here it is," the guy says.

Adam looks at it, and the smile drops from his face. He passes it under the table to me. I peek down. I'm not angry, just disappointed—the contents of the bag look almost like grass clippings, not like any pot I've ever seen. It seems like the only way it could even be from a pot plant is if they put some leaves through a paper shredder. But in no way does it look like anything worth using. We stay polite and don't badmouth the stuff until they leave, but as soon as they are out of earshot Adam and I are in unison.

"I don't think that's pot," we whisper to each other.

"At least the shakes weren't too bad," I say, "not a bad way to spend two bucks."

As we finish up the last of our drinks, the owner comes out from the back of the restaurant—we know he's the owner because his picture is up on every wall. He's happy to see the older white guy who had lauded this place when we first came in. They shake hands and begin joking around, speaking in Cambodian. They're clearly friends. We realize the guy must have lied to us so we would patronize his friend's business. It just cements the fact that the shakes were a rip off.

Only a minute or two later Rachel shows up. We tell her what happened, and that we want to try the place up the street. She seems fine with it, since her friend mentioned that all the places are pretty similar. We pay for our shakes at the counter and go over to _Happy Special Pizza_.

The new place is a little more active, but not packed. Again, we ask around, and people seem to have had some good experiences with the place. They tell us that if we doubt the legitimacy, we can ask to see the pot before we order. So I go up to the counter to check it out. Upon my request, the cashier pulls out a baggie and opens it up. _That_ is pot. Whether or not they will actually use that pot on our pizza is another question. But we're starving. The possibility of getting high has now firmly taken a backseat to getting dinner. Even if this place is a dud too, we'll just be happy with some food.

We look over the menu again, and again it looks like there are several things on the menu to order as "happy." But since we've been talking about pizza all day, we now have a craving for it. We want a large pizza to split, but they only have smaller, personal-sized pizzas, so we each order one. Adam and I both get larges, "extra happy," while Rachel, being a little more pragmatic, or maybe just a little less hungry, orders a small, "regular happy."

Twenty or thirty minutes after we order, the pizzas finally come out, each cut into eight slices. The larges we've ordered still aren't too big, and considering how hungry Adam and I are, we'll have no trouble finishing them. When we bite into the pizza, we realize that what we thought was oregano is actually a light dusting of pot over the cheese. And while it isn't a lot, it will hopefully be enough to get each of us high if we eat the whole thing. We were expecting the THC to be mixed in with the dough, but it's nice that since the pot is on top of the pizza, we'll have a good idea of how much we'll be consuming.

Adam and I each finish six slices, and Rachel is polishing off the last of her small, when Adam gets up and goes to the bathroom. We've been drinking so much water all day I'm kind of surprised neither of us has gone until then. And right after he gets up, it makes me think about having to go, too. I decide to ignore that feeling by continuing to eat my pizza. I have one slice to go by the time Adam gets back. When he sits down, he tells us that he isn't too hungry anymore, and pushes the rest of his pizza to the side.

This should have raised a red flag. I've been traveling with Adam on and off for a couple of weeks, and I know for certain that the man's stomach is a bottomless pit. Never have I even come close to out-eating him. But now I am facing a perfect storm of my extreme hunger and his human-like limits. So instead of acknowledging that red flag, I see his weakness and I take this one and only opportunity to eat more than him,[44] and begin my last slice. I pick up the slice, and have no problem finishing it, but as I'm chewing on the last bit of crust, a bug lands on my arm.

And another bug. And then one lands on my face. They keep landing on me. I am wiping them off as fast as I can, but they just keep coming. My friends are laughing at me, since the bugs seem to be only interested in me, while Adam and Rachel, both on the other side of the table, are escaping relatively bug-free. I want to get away from these bugs, and all of a sudden remember that I still have to pee. So I get up to go to the bathroom. And on the walk there, I realize I feel good.

It's a bit of a wavy feeling as I head back through the restaurant. By the time I get to the bathroom and open the door, it's undeniable: I'm a little high.

_Awesome! The pizza wasn't a waste of money,_ I think as I'm washing my hands. Then the gears shift a little more.

Wait a minute, this can't be from the pizza. I just started eating it 15 minutes ago; it's too soon to be feeling anything. This must be from the milkshake. Ha. That milkshake worked just fine, and now I just ate that whole pizza. This must be exactly what Adam realized 5 minutes ago when he decided that he was done.

I actually think the situation is pretty funny. Until I remember the bugs.

Those bugs were all over me. Was I imagining them? This is Cambodia, and it's the rainy season. It's dark out and we're sitting under a bunch of lights. It wouldn't be unreasonable that there were a bunch of bugs on me. Except there weren't any bugs for the first 30 minutes that we were here, and Adam and Rachel didn't seemed too bothered by them. Maybe they weren't laughing at the bugs landing on me, maybe they were laughing at me because I was imagining bugs. Wait, I've never imagined bugs before while I was high, maybe that wasn't pot at all, maybe it was something else. Mushrooms? No, calm down, Ty, you're getting paranoid; you get a little paranoid when you're high. I'm sure there were bugs, and I'm sure it was just a coincidence. Just play it cool.

I walk back out to the table. Adam and Rachel are looking at the bill. As I sit down I notice a dead bug lying on the table. I pick it up, hold it in my hand, and set my hand in my lap, trying to keep Adam and Rachel from noticing my concern as I stare down at the bug.

This bug is real, I know it. I'm not that high. Everything is going to be just fine.

I ease right back into the conversation as we try to figure out what to do next.

"I know a really good foot massage place," Rachel says. "It's just a couple of blocks from here."

"Actually, a foot massage does sound good, we've been walking around all day," Adam says, plucking the words from my head. Rachel tells us more about the place, assuring us of its legitimacy after we make an obligatory "happy-pizza happy-ending" joke. We pay the bill and go to get our massages.

As we walk I can feel the "happy" kicking in more and more. I'm enjoying it, but it's definitely getting stronger. We get to the massage place, and ask for three chairs. This particular massage parlor isn't much more than a pavilion, about 500 square feet of space, no walls, with about 30 or 40 big, comfortable chairs squeezed in next to one another, all pointed in one direction at a large television that isn't working.

Three Cambodian women come out and take us to our seats in the very front row. The order is Adam on the left, then me, then an empty chair that the Cambodian ladies don't want anyone using, then Rachel. To Rachel's right there are four middle-aged Australian people getting fish therapy, dipping their feet in a tank of water, while tiny fish eat off all of their dead skin. The women that show us to our chairs lift our feet and slide ottomans under our legs, get some hot towels to wash our feet, and begin the massages. We are all about to experience 30 minutes of pure bliss.

When the massage starts, given the masseuse's experience and the amount I've walked, it is absolutely fantastic. Combine that with the fact that every few minutes I am absorbing more and more THC into my bloodstream and I really can't describe it, except that I don't know if anyone has ever enjoyed a massage more than the three of us do right here. I am just so completely relaxed and every move this woman makes seems to be the right one.

I don't remember starting small talk with Adam, but I do know that I am at one point engaged in conversation, and I say the following to him:

"We shouldn't feel bad about the pizza. After all, we spent all day in church."

This is supposed to be a joke about not having to feel guilty about being high, since we have spent all day walking through and appreciating ancient religious structures, or "churches." It is, however, just a poorly constructed thought made by someone grasping at straws. I don't even know why I would feel guilty about getting high in the first place, much less why, as an agnostic,[45] I would expect to have that guilt alleviated by spending time in church. I guess, in my defense, jokes don't necessarily have to make sense to be funny. And as proof of that fact, I find my joke hilarious. Too hilarious.

When I finish speaking I begin laughing. It's an uncontrollable, incredibly loud laughter. I'm not timing it, so I don't know exactly how long I laugh, but it feels like over a minute. The lady doesn't stop rubbing my feet, but I'm sure that by this point she knows that I am on something. My friends are probably starting to get worried. I begin to realize that half the people in the massage parlor must now be staring at me, but I am laughing so hard I can't even open my eyes to know for sure. To break out of it, I have to resort to desperate measures. I bite down on the tip of my tongue—my old trick for winning staring contests in elementary school. The brief pain stops my laughter almost immediately. I wait a moment, take a few deep breaths, and ready myself for the embarrassment I am about to face.

I open my eyes and look around. No one is even acknowledging me, much less staring. Adam and Rachel are both lying back, eyes closed, enjoying the massage. The Australians getting the fish therapy are chuckling about how much it tickles. The Cambodian women are lost in their own conversation.

How did no one notice that?

"Adam, did you hear me laughing just then?" I whisper.

"What?" He smiles, clearly in a daze of his own.

"Did you just hear me laughing really hard?"

"A minute ago. I think you were saying something about feeling bad, but you interrupted yourself with a giggle. Then you closed your eyes and got quiet."

I hadn't been laughing that whole time? What's going on? Did I just make myself look like an idiot when I spoke to Adam? What did I even say to Adam? Did I embarrass myself? Was I laughing too hard? Laughing too hard about what?

I am now certain that this is without a doubt the highest I have ever been in my life. I'm not freaking out, which is good. I am even able, for the time being, to keep a somewhat clear head and think in the moment. Unfortunately, I can _only_ think in the moment. I can't remember anything that happened more than 10 seconds ago. So although I'm not freaking out, my paranoia begins filling in the gaps in my memory, and I am convinced that I had been freaking out only a moment ago.

Eventually I realize my situation. I am completely aware of my surroundings and acting appropriately, but I just have little use of my memory. When I figure that out, I'm able to calm down a bit. Although I'm still a little concerned that Adam and Rachel are going to make fun of me when they realize just how stoned I am, so I do my best not to appear too high. I'm the first to admit to not smoking too often and having a relatively low tolerance, but it would be kind of embarrassing for them to know that I'm as high as I am from not a huge amount of pot.

.

Funny thing is, although we were unaware of it at the time, we had actually all ingested a huge amount of pot. A couple days after the incident we see into Rachel again. She had spoken with her friend who had originally recommended the pizza place.

"I told him about the other night," she says. "He had a good laugh about it. We were supposed to share the pizza. One slice of regular-happy pizza is enough for the night."

"But there wasn't that much pot on top of the pizza," I tell her.

"That's what I said. But apparently that's just a little garnish. Most of the THC is cooked into the crust, like we thought. And as for 'extra happy,' they definitely give you 'extra happy.' They grow their own and don't pay taxes on it, so it doesn't cost them any more than if you just ordered extra sauce."

"So when we ate the entire pizza... extra-happy...with the milkshake?" I ask.

"Yeah... Exactly," she says.

Eight slices of pizza and a milkshake. We had, at bare minimum, taken nine times the amount necessary to get us high for the evening. And taking into account the "extra-happiness", I would bet that it was even considerably more than that. I've wondered if maybe we would have benefited from knowing this at the time, but maybe it would have just made things worse.

.

I'm finally appreciating the masseuse again. My eyes are closed, and I'm in a trance of relaxation. Her hands work from the top of my feet, down to my heels, up to my ankles, onto my calves, up my lower thighs, and—

What the fuck, up my thighs?

I open my eyes. She's kneeling on the ottoman, working her way up my legs. Then she kneels on my legs as she continues to climb her way up my body. I begin to think about some locals I saw climbing fruit trees in Vietnam, and think maybe that's what she is doing to me. In retrospect, the flaws in that theory are that she is not a farmer, nor am I a tree. I'm not even sure if her kneeling on my legs hurts me, because I've gotten so high that I can't really feel too much anymore. But she just keeps moving further and further up my legs.

Am I imagining this whole thing? Or maybe this is a sketchy massage place! No, it can't be, it's outdoors on a busy street. So I must be imagining this.

Shit! I'm imagining this!

I look over at Adam; his masseuse looks like she has started climbing him too.

He wouldn't be okay with a sketchy massage place. Right? I'm pretty sure he'd tell her to stop. Pretty sure. But that means this isn't really happening. What's worse? Hallucinations brought on from a mystery drug in a third world country or unwittingly solicited sexual favors from a middle-aged Cambodian prostitute? Jesus, I would have been content getting through life without ever having to ask myself that question.

I decide to double-check the situation. I turn to Rachel; she's been here before. She's already looking at me as if she's been waiting for Adam and me to become concerned. The empty chair between us feels like a canyon, and I am about to yell across to her, hoping she will be able to hear the echo across the vast expanse. But before I can open my mouth she has already beaten me to it.

"Don't worry," Rachel says calmly, like an older sister reassuring her kid brother, "they always do this. It's just a leg massage. No funny business."

I'm not hallucinating. Keep calm, Ty.

After a minute or two, the women start crawling down from us, almost in unison. Adam turns to me.

"Did that just happen?" he asks.

I'm just relieved that Adam is confused too. He may not be any higher than I am, but I still can't resist the urge to be an ass.

"Of course, man. Are you feeling okay?" I ask rhetorically.

The women take out baskets full of powders and liquids from underneath the ottomans, and start putting God knows what on us. I don't even know if it feels good anymore. I just feel generic pressure and moistness on my lower legs and feet. But after a few seconds, everything below my knees goes numb.

What's happening? Why can't I feel my legs? Are they asleep? Did she cut off the circulation when she was climbing me? I'm not even completely sure that they're numb, I can barely feel anything anyway, they're just so tingly. Tingly! Icy Hot! Do they have Icy Hot in Cambodia? Maybe they put something like that on my legs. But are my legs hot? No, they're not hot at all. I don't think so, at least. Maybe they're cold! Maybe. I really don't know, I can't feel much of anything. But they're just so tingly. Does Cambodia have any good hospitals? Maybe when she cut off the circulation to my feet she collapsed one of my veins. Is that even possible? I don't want to have my legs amputated.

"30 more minutes?" prods a voice.

"More time?" Rachel asks. "They want to know if we're done with our massages."

"I'm done," says Adam.

"Yeah, I think I'm good," I back him up.

"Good, 'cuz if I don't get up now, then I never will," Rachel replies, "Besides, that stuff made my legs so tingly, I don't think I'd even feel anything if they keep the massage going."

Oh thank God, she feels it too.

We get up, and I feel something. An inner voice. It's my body trying to tell me something.

You need to go to the bathroom.

I don't feel like I need to go to the bathroom.

You don't feel anything right now, but you drank a lot of water today. You need to pee.

I really don't think I do.

That actual dialogue may not happen verbatim, but there is a power struggle, with my body trying to tell me I need to go to the bathroom when my brain thinks I feel just fine. And although I can't pinpoint the exact moment it happens, I feel like that little scuffle with my subconscious flips a switch, and my body tells my brain, "You can't handle this right now. I'm taking over."

I don't remember telling anyone that I have to go to the bathroom, but a lady is showing me through a crowded night market, leading me around a corner, and pointing me to a toilet. When I finish and come back around the corner, I'm all alone.

_Where did this lady take me? Where is everyone?_ _How come I'm not going anywhere?_

It's like I'm watching a first-person view in a movie. I'm seeing and experiencing everything, but my conscious self doesn't have any control over it. I'm just along for the ride. I start to get scared. I see an old man and read his thoughts for reassurance.

"You're going to be fine, Ty," he thinks without looking at me.

I calm down at that revelation, and I turn my head to the right to see my friends standing in front of me.

Were they in the bathroom too? They're talking to me. What are they saying?

I'll handle this.

My body takes over again and I respond.

I respond? What did I respond to? What did I say? They're laughing. I made a joke! What was it? Maybe they're laughing at me, not with me. What are they saying now?

We start walking out of the market.

Where are we going? I hope we're not doing anything too difficult.

We walk down a road, towards the corner of Pub Street. There is a full-blown party scene happening 50 meters away, with the road toward our guest homes in front of us. The calmness of the street we are on and the quick pause from our walk gives me a moment of clarity.

"I think I might want to head home," Adam says.

"Yeah, I'm so tired right now," Rachel agrees.

"Me too, I'm really tired" I add.

"I don't know the last time I've been this tired," Adam reiterates.

"Hey guys," I venture a suggestion, "is 'tired' code for something else?"

"Yeah, and I don't think I've ever been so tired in my life," Rachel says with an exhausted laugh.

We say goodnight, and Rachel separates from us and heads toward her place. And as Adam and I walk back to ours, between a barrage from some tuk tuk drivers and the noise from Pub Street, I fall back into my trance, and I follow my feet all the way back to the guesthouse. It's only a 300-meter walk from where we left Rachel, but I'm not sure how we pull it off. We make our way to our room and fall asleep almost immediately. But before I close my eyes, I look at my watch, and chuckle at the fact that it's still Tuesday—this is the first time I've gone to bed before midnight in months. But considering how "tired" we are, this seems to be a reasonable exception.

.

It is not a normal sleep. I have some pretty vivid dreams. I'm wading through knee-deep water. I've been craving a burger since I left the States, and have a great one. I talk to Rachel, but I don't know what's said. I wade through water again. Then I wake up and have another argument with my body about my bladder—I guess the water was my subconscious trying to tell me something. I get up and pee so long that I'm bored before I'm finished. I go back to bed, still notably high. I don't feel cold, but my body is telling me to cover myself up with a blanket.

.

Adam and I both wake up a little before 8:00 am. The A/C has been turned on high and the room is freezing—my body was right about using the blanket. I start getting up, but I'm a little groggy, similar to the feeling you get when you sleep in for too long.

"Wow, I'm tired," Adam says.

"Yeah, me too." I say with a chuckle, "How much do you think we ate last night? _What_ do you think we ate last night?"

"I mean, I've only done 'shrooms once, so I can't say for certain, but that felt a lot like when I was on 'shrooms," he tells me, smiling at the absurdity of the situation.

"I didn't really hallucinate," I say back, "It kinda just felt like being high. Really, really, really high."

"Who knows?" Adam says, settling the discussion with the certainty that we'd never be certain.

He gets up and goes to the bathroom while I start drinking from a bottle of water sitting next to my bed.

I don't remember buying this bottle of water. Was it here last night? And where did these food wrappers come from?

There are snack wrappers all over our beds. Cookies, chips, candy bars. Nothing that costs more than fifty cents.

"When did we eat snacks? And where'd this water come from?" I call out.

"Earlier, right? Yeah, you picked up some snacks this morning."

"Oh, yeah..." I start to remember. I had run to the shop next door and picked up some food. "But it's not even 8:00. They don't open for an hour."

"Oh, yeah..." He says as he walks out of the bathroom. "I guess they opened early today? Who cares? Let's go get some breakfast. I'm starving."

"All right. And we should swing by a travel office on the way back. If we catch the overnight bus tomorrow, we can be in Bangkok by Friday morning."

We walk out of our room, down the hall, and out the front door of the guest house. Before we're off the front stoop, we see that the streets have been flooded. The town looks like a little Venice. We've been warned about flooding for the past week, and it's finally hit, and filled the roads with knee-deep water.

Wait a second. Knee-deep water. I've seen this before.

I look over toward the shop where I had picked up the snacks. It isn't open.

This doesn't add up. Unless... Shit.

"We got lunch yesterday," Adam says stoically as he puts the pieces together, "you had a burger, I had noodles."

"We waded through knee-deep water to get there," I throw in. We're both on the same page now. "We saw Rachel. I picked up some snacks from the shop afterwards."

"Are you wearing your watch? What day is it?" Adam asks.

I look down at my wrist.

"Thursday."

"It can't be Thursday. Yesterday was Tuesday. Where's Wednesday?!"

"Did we sleep for a day and a half?"

"We wasted a whole day," he says, and we can't help but have a depressing giggle at our sheer idiocy.

"That's not even the worst part," I add. "We ate that pizza the night before last, and I'll be honest: I'm still a little high."

"I didn't want to say anything, but Jesus, man, so am I."

.

In 9th grade Health Class they told us that marijuana can keep you inebriated for up to 24 hours. In my mind, that had always been a made-up fear tactic, like the kid who goes insane from LSD, or the guy who drinks too much alcohol and has trouble operating heavy machinery—just an unrealistic outlier to make kids think twice before doing drugs. But Adam and I proved that fear tactic right. And then we topped it by fifty percent.

Medical anomalies and cheap laughs aside, what happened that night and the following day and a little the next morning was not something to be proud of. We jumped head first into more drugs than we should have,[46] ended a night in a fun town way too early, and the biggest crime of all—we wasted what could have been a full day in and around Siem Reap.

Honestly, I still to this day am not exactly sure what was in that pizza or how much of it I ate. It was stupid, poorly researched, and is only memorable because it's just so self-deprecating. The moral isn't to avoid drugs at any cost. I know some people who have done some amazing things on drugs. [47] But, if you do drugs in another country, just know what the hell you're getting into first.

# Bangkok

Thailand is _the_ tourist haven of Asia. It's got all the comforts of home (7-Eleven, medicine, people speaking English) with most of the benefits of a third-world country (low prices, bribable cops, Westerners). Combine that with the naturally beautiful landscape that they can't yet afford to destroy, and no wonder it's the largest draw for foreigners in the region. Unfortunately, this means it's the largest draw for foreigners in the region.

Khao San

If Thailand is the tourist capital, then Khao San Road is the tourist capital of the tourist capital. It's Times Square but with more Americans. It's nothing special, just a small street in Bangkok that over the past two or three decades has become the default home base for backpackers. It doesn't offer anything distinctly Thai, it doesn't offer anything of high quality, and it certainly doesn't offer any real value. It's just western shops, western food, and western prices. And after a month and a half in Asia, I couldn't have been happier to be there.

.

Adam and I get to our hostel in Bangkok at 7:00 pm. We're staying about a mile from Khao San Road, and after we drop off our bags, rather than explore an unfamiliar city after dark, we decide to keep it simple and head to Khao San. Halfway there we stop at a street cart to get dinner. While we wait for our meal to be prepared, I notice a 7-Eleven across the street, so I run over to pick us up some drinks. The mere existence of a 7-Eleven is fantastic in its own right, the sign alone gives me chills of anticipation, but when I step through those doors, it's like a homecoming. Slurpee machines, air-conditioning, an Asian guy working behind the counter, all of it is just like back in the States. But the cherry on top is the smell. Asian cities just smell different than cities in the west; it's not a bad smell, almost like the aroma in a pho restaurant, but even though you get used to it quickly, it's still always there. But the 7-Eleven is odorless and cold, and as bland and boring as that sounds, after coming out of the humidity, heat, and Asia-smell, and after spending a month and a half in jungle, mountains, farms, and Asian cities, the sterility of the air is more refreshing than I ever would have imagined. I linger around the store for a few minutes before getting a couple of beers, Adam and I eat our dinner, and we continue on to our destination.

You can see it from a few blocks away. There are dozens of tuk tuks parked on the end of the street, with their drivers mobbing any foreigner who walks near them. Adam and I barge past the drivers, turn the corner as fast as we can, and arrive on Khao San Road. It's a wide but short street, about two blocks long, and is only open to foot traffic. The length of it is filled with hundreds, maybe thousands of travelers, and is lined with restaurants, bars, travel agencies, souvenir stands, and food carts. I buy some headphones, Adam picks up a T-shirt, and the two of us begin a mini pub crawl.

A few beers later we're at a bar in the middle of Khao San Road when a Thai girl sitting at the adjacent table starts talking to us. She tells us that her friend has just cancelled on her, leaving her alone for the night; she asks if she can join us, and we oblige.

Her name is Feng; she speaks pretty good English and seems to be well educated, which is a relief. We figure the only way a local would be at a tourist bar would be she's either a rich girl who can afford to drink with westerners, or is a prostitute who gets business by drinking with westerners. [48] The more we talk to her the more we're leaning toward the former, and although she does seem to be flirting with us, we just chalk it up to our natural beauty, and we're a little more trusting. I wouldn't say Adam is reciprocating by flirting himself, since we're still wary of the prostitute possibility, but guys always try to make themselves look good in front of women regardless of circumstances. And I am more than willing to help Adam in that endeavor. Until I notice something when Feng takes a drink from her cocktail.

I immediately start making Adam look bad. I'm making stupid jokes, bringing up embarrassing stories, and just generally throwing him off his game until Feng goes to the bathroom.

"What the hell was that about?" Adam laughs. He's not angry, just a little confused.

"I think I saw something," I try to justify my action. "I mean, I might have seen something."

"You saw something? What was it?" Despite the ambiguity of my words, he's no longer confused, like he preemptively believes me, even though he has no idea what I'm going to say.

"When she took a drink... She might have had a lump in her throat."

"What do you mean, a lump?"

"A lump... an Adam's apple."

Adam looks nervous for a split second, betrayed by something of his own namesake, but his shock fades almost immediately, like he knew something was off from the get-go. I think he feels the same way I do—just plain curious.

"But it makes sense," I follow, "how often does a girl in a bar start talking to you out of the blue? And this is kind of what Thailand is known for."

"She doesn't look like a guy at all, though," Adam states.

And in Adam's defense, she really doesn't.

"Yeah, but you've seen _Maury_. With enough makeup and surgery, dudes can look more like a woman than women do."

"Are you sure about the Adam's apple?" he asks. I don't think Adam ever truly wanted to hook up with this girl, but know I'm certain of it, and all further debate is strictly academic. But that doesn't mean we're not still trying to settle on an answer.

"Not sure at all. We'll have to get dual angles on her throat next time she takes a drink," I strategize.

Adam and I might be some of the first guys in history to actually hope that the girl they've been chatting with will turn out to be a guy. It's not that we want to treat Feng like some sort of spectacle, but it is an undeniable fact that meeting a girl who is actually a guy is way more interesting than meeting a girl who's just got the standard parts.

When Feng gets back, we do our best to get her to take a drink so we can settle the mystery.

"Wow, I'm so thirsty, is it hot in here?" I ask.

"Yeah, it's kind of hot." Adam follows up.

"It is pretty warm. Do you guys want to get out of here then?" Feng asks.

"No!" Adam gets out as quickly as possible before moving back into a smoother delivery, "This place is fine, we should stay. I just need to drink something," he says as he lifts his beer.

Feng plays into our ruse and raises her drink to her lips, too. Adam and I both stare at her throat. She takes a drink, but she's almost mocking us with how tiny a sip it us. Adam and I dart our eyes to each other, both making the same puzzled face. Neither of us is sure one way or another. Fortunately there is loud music playing, so we can whisper to one another as Feng orders another drink and makes conversation with the waitress.

"I saw _some_ thing. But I'm not sure what," Adam says as hushed as he can.

"There was a bump, but it was pretty small. But it was a small sip. Do women have a little bump?" I ask.

"I don't know. They might."

"And remember what that guy George in Vietnam told us? That there's a procedure to shave an Adam's apples down so they're less noticeable." I add.

"Come on, you can't trust George. He also told us that the South Africans invented a superior type of beef jerky, but refuse to share the recipe with the rest of the world."

"And how do you know they didn't?!" I demand, hoping against hope that there's an even better type of dried meat out there, before turning back to the issue at hand.

Simply put, there's a decent chance that this girl is, or was once, a guy. And since she seems to be flirting with us, we'd really be more at ease knowing the truth, one way or another. But unfortunately, there's not enough of a chance to ask her outright. We're like cops that have a hunch, but no probable cause. And considering the lengths we'd probably have to go for the suspect to give consent to a search, we decide we're okay with never really knowing the answer. We'll just have to accept the ambiguity of Schrödinger's scrotum. But that still leaves a problem.

"She keeps flirting with us," I say, "It's pretty uncomfortable."

"Maybe we should just leave. I don't want to be rude about it, is all," Adam says.

And while I'm inclined to agree with Adam, I can't help but wonder if that makes us homophobes, or, I suppose more accurately, transgendephobes. I'd like to think it doesn't, since we're not leaving Feng _because_ she could be a man. We're leaving because if she _is_ a man, then by way of initiating the conversation and continually flirting, she is certainly guilty of a lie of omission, and has put us all in a strange position. If she's not a man, there's still a decent chance that she's a prostitute. And if she's neither, then we're leaving solely because of our overactive imaginations, which, although probably making us assholes, should at least clear us of being bigots.

"Leave her here without being rude? How are we going to pull that off?" I ask.

"THE GERMANS!" he yells.

.

We had met a group of four German girls while on a bus in Vietnam, and we've been bumping into them every few days—through the Mekong Delta, in Cambodia, we had even seen them from our cab as we were arriving in Bangkok that evening. They all seem genuinely nice, and they're all pretty attractive. Adam denies it, but I'm convinced he's trying to hook up with one of them in particular. He seems to always have his chances thwarted though, anything from well-meaning third parties ruining the mood or just a slip-up with contact information, but on top of that he just never seems to make a move on her. And now we see her and her friends walking down Khao San Road.

.

We would have been happy to see the Germans anyway, but given our current situation, they're a godsend, since we need a way to separate ourselves from Feng. We get the girls' attention, they come into the bar, pull up a table, and join us. I, not too subtly, am throwing hints to the German girls for Adam's sake. We begin making conversation with other people in the bar, and as our table grows in number, Feng begins paying less and less attention to us as she begins talking more and more to those joining us. After half an hour of conversation, one of the German girls suggests we go to the club up the street.

Double jackpot!

We can break away from Feng to get to the club, and while we're there, Adam can finally make a move on the German girl.

Part one is easy. We leave the bar when Feng is busy talking to someone else, and while I wish we had at least said goodbye, we do technically succeed in our goal. But as we head up the street toward a giant neon sign with cursive writing that reads: _The Club_ , I start to feel a little guilty about ditching her. I know that if you've just met someone at a bar, and if they make you uncomfortable for any reason, even if it's just for an imagined Adam's apple or unsubstantiated testes, then you have every right to walk away. Besides, with how lively the bar was when we left, I'm sure she'll meet other people in no time. But I still can't shake the idea that we've hurt someone's feelings. And only a few minutes after getting inside The Club, karma gets me back, as part two of the plan comes crashing down.

"He's very cute, but I have a boyfriend!" yells Adam's crush to me over the booming club music after I hint[49] that Adam likes her.

"What? Is that why Adam never makes a move on you?!" I yell back.

"Probably! I told him a while ago!" She starts laughing. "I definitely told you, too!"

"Yeah, I don't listen very well! But what about all that sexual tension I assumed existed between you two?" I ask.

"You were just assuming it existed!" She answers.

"You don't know that!"

Okay, maybe Adam doesn't have a crush on that girl, but after all the buildup I've had in my head, the truth doesn't really matter. I'm vicariously heartbroken, like a mom who just saw her son singlehandedly lose a little league game for his team, when the kids are only concerned about getting their juice box and granola bar. Fortunately though, I'm able to put aside those feelings and remember my situation. I'm in a crowded club, have an almost perfect amount of beer in my blood, and am surrounded by friends. There's no room for heartbreak, only room for fun.

I'm going to tell you that Adam is so suave on that dance floor that within a few songs half the girls in the club are swooning over him, and that by the end of the night he's got to pry one of German girls off of him. I choose to tell you this because:

a) That's the only happy ending this story can have, and

b) You have no solid evidence to prove that I'm lying.

Hours later, after The Club has closed and Adam and I are finished with a full night of dancing, speculating on genitalia, and impressing hot girls, we part ways with the fraus, and the two of us head back to our hostel.

Only about a minute or two after leaving Khao San road, we pass a wide, well-lit alley. I notice out of the corner of my eye a lot of people and commotion as we pass, but there's always a lot of commotion in the city, and I don't pay it any attention.

"Was that guy getting mugged?" Adam asks just after we pass the alley.

"What? I didn't really look."

"I'm not sure what I saw. It's probably nothing, but we should check."

We walk back a couple steps to look down the alley again. It takes a few seconds for the scene to register, but when it does, Adam and I react simultaneously.

"What the fuck?"

Standing in the middle of the alley is a Thai man no older than 25; he's holding a sword, waving it back and forth, and screaming. He is surrounded by about 10-15 unarmed Thai men of a similar age who are also screaming, trying to get him to drop the sword, and inching toward him at a slow but certain pace. When the maniac in the middle swings the sword any which way, all the people in that direction jump back a bit, but ultimately the circle is closing in on the swordsman. The guys surrounding him keep creeping forward ever so slowly, the man in the center lifts his sword, ready to strike anyone who comes close, and I can only stare as I wait for the biggest battle I will ever see unfold before our eyes.

"Whelp, looks like they have everything under control!" Adam spouts, already turning away from the alley, "How about we... uh... getthefuckouttahere."

"Um..." I say, trying to stall, "uh..."

I would love to see a real live kung fu movie. I don't want to see anyone die. I'd rather not die myself. But holy shit I would love to see a real live kung fu movie.

I hesitate for longer than I should, weighing the pros and cons, before I finally concede that the odds of this living up to a theatrical kung fu battle are miniscule, and I'm more than likely just going to witness second-degree murder. Leaving is probably for the best.

"Yeah... Let's go," I say in a tone so reluctant and disappointed you would think that I've just agreed to do a selfless act for someone in need.

Adam and I walk away from the alley, passing up the potential for one of the greatest things we may ever see in our lives, and end our night on Khao San Road.

Not that any of this matters though, since there's no way I'm convincing anyone that Adam and I got hit on by a transvestite, impressed a gaggle of hot German girls, and saw a back-alley Thai sword fight all in one night.

# Monkeys

Initiation

I'm in Vietnam, serving as the fifth wheel while I eat lunch with two couples, one Australian and one Singaporean. As we eat, we discuss our plans for the afternoon.

"Keen to visit Monkey Island?" asks David, one half of the Australian couple.

"What's Monkey Island?" I ask, since I lack even to most basic skills of deduction.

"It's a nature preserve out in the bay. It's just an island filled with monkeys," says David's girlfriend, Laura, "Do you want to go?"

"Is that rhetorical?" I ask, "Of course I want to go to Monkey Island. What kind of monster wouldn't?"

"We're not going," chimes one of the Singaporeans.

"We see too many monkeys back home as it is," the other clarifies.

Too many monkeys? What does that even mean? That's like too many chocolate chips in your cookie. There's no such thing.

The Aussies and I have never seen a wild monkey up close before, and I can barely contain my excitement. But we aren't stupid; we know we have to put a plan together. I mean, who would go to Monkey Island without thinking it through first? Fortunately, we're able to settle on the following course of action:

.

**Step One** : Buy as many nuts and bananas as we can carry.

**Step Two** : Feed wild monkeys from our bare hands.

.

Foolproof.

We go to a little corner store to complete step one, and an hour later we're on a boat to get started on step two. On the boat with us are about ten other tourists and a captain. When we reach the island, the captain drops us off on the beach, tells us he'll be back in an hour, and then takes the boat to wait about 50 meters off shore.

Odd. Why doesn't the captain want to see the monkeys?

I ignore that confusion as I get back to the excitement of seeing monkeys, and I scope out our surroundings. The island isn't too big, about 2 square kilometers. There are large rocky hills on either side of the beach, and the center of the island is thick with foliage. But the shoreline is eerily empty. For a place called Monkey Island, there are suspiciously few monkeys around. Zero, specifically. So we do the most responsible thing we can, and blindly follow a path leading up one of the rocky hills and into the jungle on our search for wild animals.

When we reach an overlook halfway up the hill, we can see down to the opposite side of the island.

"There's a monkey!" someone yells.

"And another!"

They're off in the distance, but they are, in fact, monkeys. Meaning the people who named this place were not liars.

My relative inexperience with monkeys up to this point has me pretty excited, but I'm also a little concerned, because now that we're up on the hill, we are effectively surrounded. Almost like the monkeys have used their wily intellect to lure us to the center of the island, far from the beach, and from any means of escape.

Still, we continue further up the trail until we come to a blind corner. But before we can continue around it, something walks around to us. At more than five feet tall, a tailless monkey with man-like features turns the corner—oh, wait, just a human being. It's a Vietnamese guy, and I'll never forget what he says:

"Get out of here."

It turns out we're trespassing on private property; there's a small resort on the corner of the island that we've walked into. One could assume this man works for the resort and doesn't want us bother his patrons. But I still prefer to think of it as a noble warning by a local who knows what the monkeys are really up to, trying to help us out in the face of potential disaster.

We turn around and head back to the beach. And when we get past the tree line and onto the sand, we see that now the monkeys are waiting for us.

"More monkeys!" someone yells.

There are about three or four on them standing on the beach. They spot us, and David, Laura, and I start throwing out a little food to get them to come closer. So does everyone else.

More and more monkeys begin to come out of the jungle. We keep giving them food. The more food that we give, the more monkeys that come, until there are 20 or 30 of them on the beach. And while most of them are cute and appropriately monkey-sized, one of the monkeys is big. Too big. Not too big that it seems unreal, but too big for us to be comfortable near it. It has a bright red face, and it is perched on a nearby rock. It isn't eating. It's just watching. I have no doubt in my mind that this monkey is their leader.

We start to run out of food to give away, and David, in his innocence and wonder, notices a half-eaten banana laying on the ground, so he picks it up, intending to give it to another monkey. But the monkey-boss doesn't see it that way. As far as it's concerned, David, by picking up the banana, is now stealing food from the island. And if he's stealing food, next he will be settling the land, destroying the habitat, and luring the most beautiful and fertile female monkeys to join him back in Australia with the rest of his primate harem. The monkey-boss doesn't like this, so it charges.

David has his back turned, so I don't know how much of it he sees, but I witness the whole thing. The monkey springs from the rock, gallops across the beach using both its hands and feet, almost resembling a cheetah in the way it strides, latches onto David, and sinks its teeth into his leg.

To recap the situation, this nasty, dirty, gigantic monkey sees people coming to the island to offer it food, and refuses to allow it. That's how horrid this creature is: it's angered by gifts. And in its anger, it bites David. Hard. Fortunately, David is wearing jeans, which lessen the damage, but they don't completely protect him. David shakes the beast off his leg, assesses the injury, realizes that the physical wounds are nothing compared with the emotional ones he has just suffered, and he walks off the attack like a badass. But that's only the beginning of this tragedy.[50]

On the boat ride back, David starts moaning and grunting. He nervously begins picking through Laura's hair for bugs. When we get back to the mainland he swipes a dozen bananas from a shop and eats them all using only his feet. It's clear that he's becoming one of them.

With no hospitals nearby with the facilities to help him, and with the problem becoming worse every minute, we do the only humane thing we can. We lure him to the local zoo using grapes and peanut butter, and then feed David to a pack of hungry giraffes. It's what he would have wanted.

How could something as innocent as Monkey Island have turned out this way?

The Moral

They're everywhere—cities, wilderness, alleged monkey-free strip clubs. They're as ubiquitous as squirrels, but have the demeanor of goblins. I know, I know, they look adorable, and it seems like they'd be great to have around. But monkeys are not a perk. They're a liability.

Seeing any wild, exotic animal that weighs over 15 pounds is going to seem fascinating. I get that, I used to think the exact same thing. Hell, "having a barrel full of monkeys" means "having a good time." But it's the most dangerously misleading idiom since "jumping the shark." A barrel full of monkeys shouldn't be a fun time; it should be an insane medieval king's weapon of last resort.

What everyone forgets is that monkeys aren't like other animals. They've got hands, and thumbs, and tails: all the physical capabilities of a person, with none of the accountability. They don't conform to social norms and mores, they're not subject to the laws of man, and they have no conscience or regard for humanity. Monkeys will gladly steal from you. They'll attack you with no remorse. And the masturbation? Jesus, those things are always masturbating. It's enough to put a 12-year-old boy to shame. I've had multiple run-ins with monkeys, and have witnessed nothing but sociopathic behavior:

.

_Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia_ _:_ I'm in a popular tourist spot where monkeys congregate for food scraps, and I see one of them about 20 feet away. I look around to make sure there are no other monkeys nearby, see none, and I slowly creep toward the lone monkey to get a picture of it. When I'm within about 6 or 7 feet, I snap a photo. By the time I look up from my camera, there are two more monkeys standing next to him. I turn around, and see four more behind me. I'm surrounded. Trapped. They're staring at me, and my mind races as I fear for the worst. Fortunately I manage to escape when one of the captors begins to masturbate.

_Mekong Delta, Vietnam_ _:_ This monkey isn't even wild. I'm at a small biological park, and there's a monkey kept safely in a cage. Or so we all think. The monkey jumps onto the wall of its chain-link cage and lures a girl over with a cute pose. When she nears the cage and looks up at the animal, it proceeds to pee on her face. I won't deny that this is one of the greatest things I have ever witnessed, but technically speaking it's not the behavior you want from a monkey.[51]

_Bokor Hill, Cambodia:_ The wise man warns me not to get them wet or feed them after midnight. I don't listen. The creatures become violent and attempt to conquer the town. I barely escape with my life.

_Jaipur, India_ _:_ I see a woman sitting at a restaurant with a camera in her open bag. A monkey climbs down the side of a building, steals the camera, and poops on the bag. I know this monkey is not an amateur because the deed is done with the stealth and speed of a professional that's been at it for years. I refuse to believe the monkey did it for any reason other than to explicitly harm a stranger. A monkey doesn't even know how to work a mini-SD drive, much less can it grasp the concept of capturing treasured memories through the art of photography. Within moments the monkey is perched back on top of the same building where it started. It takes in the hot Indian mid-day sun, sets down its trophy, and as a crude victory celebration, it then begins to masturbate.

.

I don't have much more first hand experience with monkeys, because I have learned to avoid them as best I can. I hope you'll learn the same lesson by proxy. Unless you have the opportunity to see someone get peed on. Then it's all worth it.

# India

As a warning for the squeamish, please be aware that this chapter contains realistic depictions of India.

The Basics

_Toilets:_ Ready for a mindfuck? Most of the world doesn't sit down to poop. They squat, as in they use squat toilets. They are literally just holes in the ground that occasionally flush. Want to know how to use one? Just Google it. Not with image-search! It's really not too weird, but that first mental hurdle is tough. And if you ever go to India, it's something you'll have no choice but to experience.

_Toilet Paper:_ Think you can handle another? Most of the world doesn't use toilet paper. And it's evident if you ever go to India. If you're in a nicer establishment, there may be some sort of hose next to the toilet, but the majority of places will have nothing but a pail full of dirty water. Want to know what to do with that water? I sure as hell don't, and so I never really bothered to find out. All I know is there's no way it's not gross. Just buy toilet paper before you get to India, and carry some with you wherever you go. Also, try not to think about any of this when you see your dinner being prepared by somebody's bare, unwashed hands.

Research

Everyone I've met who's been to India gives me their two cents.

"You'll love it."

"Stay out of the big cities."

"You'll hate it."

"Remember to get hand sanitizer."

Everybody has a different take. And of all the advice and warning I get before I go, the only constants are cops and shit. I don't mean cops and things related to cops. I mean police officers, and I mean shit.

Security has a heavy presence in India, to the point that it's a borderline police state. On top of that, the police in India are notoriously corrupt. The thought of a police state with a corrupt force is actually pretty scary, but it's not like you'd think. There's no Orwellian society with cameras tracking your every move and government data centers recording your phone calls, while cops wait around every corner to exploit you for anything even slightly questionable you may have said or done. Not because India has some great respect for civil liberties despite their corruption, the threat of terrorism, and tensions with Pakistan; it's because they're India, and they can't afford to do anything Orwellian. The corruption is there, but when the police force is low-tech and underfunded, it's not that intimidating. It's like a 6-year-old threatening to beat you up. I have a bigger concern on my mind when I get to India.

It's the poop. And not the animal poop. Everyone just seems to gloss over the animal poop when telling me about India. And that makes sense. I've stepped in dog crap before, so how bad could it be anyway? What concerns me are the constant cautions about human poop. But merely the fact that there is human feces on the streets in India was not why I'm getting the heads up, that seems only to be a sidebar. I'm being warned about what that poop means. Because when you see human poop out in the open, it means that a human being has pooped out in the open. And everyone I've spoken to, every single person, has warned me that at some point, without any fanfare or notification, I will see a full-grown adult squatting down and duecing in the middle of the street. This, they tell me, is something I need to spend time preparing for. Currency exchange? How to get around? Where to stay? I don't know a thing about any of that. But damn it I am going to be ready when I see a guy pooping on the sidewalk.

The Mess

India is without a doubt the dirtiest place I've ever been. There are no public trashcans, but sometimes you can get lucky when there are at least somewhat organized piles of litter, as if everyone on that block said "These are the designated spots that are going to smell awful." I really do find it shocking that India, of all places, is so polluted. Indians in America are some of our best anti-litter advocates. From my experience, a single piece of garbage on the side of the highway will give an Indian pause, and bring a tear to his eye.

But on top of the garbage, literally, is the animal poop. India, especially in the smaller cities and towns, is filled with animals; animals that walk freely through the streets, animals that for some reason can't grasp something as simple as a toilet. Someone very ignorant and cocky who hears about the state of Indian streets might say something like "I've stepped in dog crap before, so how bad could it be anyway?" If only those idiots knew. There are so many animals in India that the occasional dog mess isn't even a comparison. Cows, goats, entire flocks of sheep, camels... All those fucking camels. They eat constantly, they're huge, and their ass is at face level. They are perfectly constructed for the promotion of unsanitary conditions.

Walking through the streets of almost any city or town is like trying to get through a labyrinth. You're navigating a path where the walls are giant globs of animal crap, and the half-man/half-bull has been replaced by a regular bull—a bull that has a lot of friends, all of whom are ready to build more walls.

Food

Food in India is one of the cruelest jokes there is. I don't think I have one meal in that country I don't like. And the king of all meals is thali: a style of eating where, for under a dollar, you get fantastic all-you-can-eat curries, vegetables, maize, sauces, and flatbread. It's even healthy, damn it.

But I hope you really enjoy your meal, because 40 rupees isn't the full price, that's just the down payment. Expect to cover the rest of the bill with your knees, because you'll be spending the next 24 hours squatting over an Indian toilet, praying to Vishnu you still have some toilet paper left in your backpack. See, India has no regard for hand washing or sanitation, to the point that it will make you yearn for the hygienic practices of Cambodia. On the down side, unless you've already had horrible food sickness in the past few months, you'll be getting horrible food sickness in India. On the plus side, your stomach will be made of titanium in only a week or two. Chinese food and burritos may never faze you again.

Rail

Trains are one of the most recognizable elements of Indian culture. Everyone can picture the general seating class, with people crammed in, one on top of the other, and even sitting on the roof. Some of the most well-known movies to take place in India, _Gandhi_ , _Slumdog Millionaire_ , _The Darjeeling Limited_ , all evoke the imagery of Indian trains. The directors are able to romanticize Indian train travel based on the beautiful scenery and almost community feel that presents itself in those cars. And for that I will never forgive those filmmakers, because they convinced me to ride a train in India.

Go to any train station in India and the first thing you'll see, besides an army of tuk tuk drivers, are soldiers with automatic weapons. It's pretty intimidating, although a little less so after you realize that all the weapons are old enough to be appropriate in a WWII movie. Closer to the station, there's almost always a bunker with a machine gun sticking out. The gun itself is damn serious, but the bunker is usually just made out of plywood and some sandbags balanced on a few flimsy poles. A well-placed shove or maybe just a strong gust of wind could be enough to bring it to the ground. Head inside the train station and there will be a metal detector at the entrance. At the larger train stations it might be plugged in, and you may even be expected to walk through it, although no one will bother stopping you if it goes off. That is the state of the police state.

Once inside, you can proceed to buy a ticket. The good news about buying a train ticket is that there will be 20 open ticket windows, there are tickets set aside for foreigners, and a general-class ticket for a 5-hour trip is only about $1. The bad news is everything else.

At the 20 open ticket windows, there will be between 400 and 800 locals trying to buy tickets. They won't be lining up for tickets, because India does not have lines. Somehow, in the 30,000 years of human history on the subcontinent, either no one has suggested, "Hey, how about the first person to show up gets to be the first one served," or worse, someone has suggested the idea, and someone else has said "Shut up, Suresh, we're sick of your radical fantasies. We're all going to mob together, and we'll decide turns based on whoever can elbow their way to the front the quickest."[52]

After 30 minutes of elbowing your way to the front, you'll be told that you cannot buy a ticket because you're at the general seating office. And foreigners, you'll find, are no longer allowed to buy general seating.

You hear that everybody? Riding on top of the train? Taking in the scenery and fresh air? One of the coolest things about India? White people apparently die too easily to be allowed to do that anymore.[53] So instead they'll give you bad directions to a different office down the street where foreigners can buy stupid foreigner-only tickets for stupid comfortable travel.

When you finally find that office after asking 2 tuk tuk drivers and a cop for better directions, you'll go inside and see another 20 ticket windows, but this time only three of them will be open. One of those windows will have big signs that say "Foreigner Sales - Foreigners only." In front of that window will be a mob-line of mostly Indian guys and a couple of white people. So you'll get in mob and realize another cruel irony of India: that the country that steals all of America's customer service jobs does not practice customer service themselves, and the rate at which people are helped will be DMV-paced as best. Combine that with the fact that this is the longest line for Foreigner tickets since they toured with Journey and REO Speedwagon back in '81, and the wait will be downright aggravating. But if you're patient, you'll eventually get to the front, and if you've filled out your ticket request form correctly,[54] you'll be sold your ticket. Well, not for today, they're sold out of the tourist tickets for the rest of the week. How about next Tuesday?

But let's say that you plan ahead or appropriately bribe the right people and actually get a ticket. Congratulations, you now own the right to occupy a rickety cot that's bolted perilously high up the wall of a train. So you go to the station's platform, hop on board your train, navigate through the crowd, and find your death-cot. If you've found the correct one, you'll notice that it's occupied by a sleeping family of four. You now have the option to either stand in the aisle of the train for the duration of the trip, or evict a sleeping family of four from the cot they've had to resort to illegally borrowing just to get a few hours of rest, all so you can lay down while you read your book or listen to music on your tablet or mp3 player that costs more than what this family collectively makes in 3 months.

After you choose to evict the family, and once you get over the guilt of having just perpetrated an act befitting of an evil, rich, out of touch industrialist from 1890s London, you can finally relax for your five hour journey.

"But let's be conservative," you tell yourself, "I'll be lucky if I make it there in five hours, it could be more like seven or eight. That's why I'm taking the 8:00 am train. I shouldn't expect to be there until 3:00 or 4:00 this afternoon."

And then you must do nothing but pass the time on your seven hour trip.

Nine hour trip.

Twelve hour trip?

When you finally show up at your destination at whatever time Shiva has allowed, remember the bright side: that you only paid $3 for a 14-hour train ride. And that it's still better than any train experience you could have had in France.

Bike

On my first full day in the desert city of Jaisilmer I rent a motor-scooter and see the area. It costs me 300 rupees plus gas money for a one-day rental. I drive around the desert all day, and more importantly, get to drive on almost completely empty roads with no real laws. But when I pull up at the rental shop to drop the scooter off, I suddenly feel unfulfilled when I see a few motorcycles sitting out front.

"You want a motorcycle?" The owner shouts out as soon as he sees me checking out the row of Yamahas. "You come back tomorrow! Four hundred rupees for the day. Very nice bikes."

"Thanks, but I've never driven a motorcycle," I say.

"You come back, I'll teach you," he tells me, closing his pitch.

I come back a couple days later, give him 400 rupees as payment and an old student ID as collateral, and he gets the keys and walks me out front.

"This is the front brake," he tells me as he shows me around the bike, "NEVER use this brake. Only use the rear brake. That's the gear shift. This is the clutch. Got it?" he asks.

"Totally..."

It's important that you're aware of my experience with manual transmissions. My dad taught me how to drive a manual transmission one afternoon when I was 17. I test drove a manual car when I was 20. That is my full experience with manual transmissions. I've never even driven a motorcycle before, and now I have to master that while remembering how to shift.

On my first attempt to get out of neutral, I stall.

"No, no, just like a car," he says, "smooth clutch, smooth shift."

"...Right... just like a car..." I reply.

I stall again. And just like that the salesman knows it's hopeless.

"Okay, how about you take the scooter again?" he says.

"No thanks, I was really only interested in the motorcycle," I tell him. "Can I just get my money back?"

And just like that he knows I can figure it out if I put my mind to it.

"Okay, okay, let's try again."

I get the hang of it after a couple more tries, and head off for my first motorcycle drive. Through the desert. Alone. With no helmet. Not telling anyone where I'm going. In India. Everything about this is incredibly dumb.

Everything about this is also incredibly fun. The roads are the Autobahn as far as I'm concerned. Not that I'm limiting myself to the roads. Hell, if you pay in cash and your only deposit is an expired student ID, any vehicle becomes an off-road vehicle. A desert, a motorcycle, and a full tank of gas-it sets the stage for _one of the coolest things I've ever done in my life._

I don't want to get your hopes up. I don't save someone's life or get involved in a high-speed chase. I don't really do anything but have a two-minute conversation. In fact, I'm not that cool to begin with, so one of the coolest things I've ever done in my life isn't really that big of an accomplishment. But what I do is authentic, and without an ounce of fear. And one of the biggest regrets of my trip is that I don't have any friends with me to witness it.

It's getting late in the day and I'm heading back to town after spending all day driving around the desert. I had passed three cops at an intersection a few miles out of town earlier in the day; they had been talking to some people in a truck that they had pulled over. When I come back to that same intersection that afternoon, those same cops are still there, and they wave me over to the side of the road.

"You are breaking the law," one of them shouts as soon as they approach me.

"How," I say, trying to be polite.

"Where is your license and registration?" the same one asks, seemingly the leader of the group.

Registration? I'm in India. I've seen people driving motorized donkeys.

"Here's my license, I don't have a registration," I say.

"No registration? That's very illegal," says one of the other cops as he joins the pow-wow. "How do we know this bike is not stolen?"

It's getting pretty clear that I'm in the beginning of a shakedown. You hear about these a lot, where cops extort foreigners by threatening to arrest them for breaking nonexistent laws. Every traveler, every guidebook, and every local says the same thing: if cops are shaking you down, give them some money and get the hell out of there.

It seems like good advice. I'm in unfamiliar territory, outnumbered, and surrounded by potentially hostile Indians. I don't want to end up like Custer. Still, I decide not to give in too easily. Maybe it's my pride. Maybe it's the adrenaline and poise that comes from riding a motorcycle all day. I'm a little scared that it's as simple as me thinking that it will be exciting to get arrested abroad. But when it comes down to giving these guys my money, and then driving away on my motorcycle knowing that some crooked cops have gotten the best of me, I can only think one thing:

Not a goddamn chance.

"Here's the receipt from my rental, so you know it's not stolen," I reply.

"Still, you have no registration, that's a big fine," says the chief. "A big spot fine. You pay it here, and you can go."

"You pay us," chimes his buddy.

"So what, you guys want a bribe?" I ask. I want to watch them tiptoe around the issue. I'm a little disappointed with their blunt response.

"Yes! A bribe! You pay us or we arrest you," says the backup.

And that's when my ill-advised bravado becomes outright stupidity. I don't know where it comes from, because I honestly don't remember thinking the words that come out of my mouth, but I sure as hell remember saying them.

"Alright, arrest me," I deadpan.

I don't know why, but I'm completely serious. I stick out my arms, ready to be handcuffed, almost wanting them to do it, "I already know all three of your names from your badges. You want the American Consulate to know that you're arresting their citizens for refusing to bribe you?"

We're in the middle of the desert. The city is in view way out on the horizon, but it's still miles away, and there isn't a soul around. The cops outnumber me, they have guns, and they have clubs. It will take nothing for them to beat the hell out of an uppity foreigner, take his wallet, and leave him to drive home on his now mysteriously damaged motorcycle. And that thing about knowing their names? They do have name tags, but I haven't actually read a single one. They could be written in Hindi lettering for all I know. And even if I had been able to read them, they're Indian last names that I've never heard before; there is no way I would remember them. I can't call what I'm doing a bluff, because I am somehow entirely confident, even hoping they won't back down, but it is still an exaggeration at best.

One of the cops puts his hand on his handcuffs. I can't tell if he seriously intends to use them, or if he's just be upping his bluff. I keep my hands out, ready for them to be locked up. The three of them talk sternly in their own language for one of the longest 15 seconds of my life, and at the end of their discussion the leader turns back to me.

"Okay. Go. Get out of here."

Is that it?

I'm actually a little disappointed that they're letting me off so easy.

"But he has money!" says the one with his hand on his cuffs, raising my hopes for a brief second, before the leader snaps back at him in his own language, making it clear that the transaction is over. But whatever disappointment I have is far outweighed by happiness from the knowledge that I've just won—at least as much as one can actually "win" is in this scenario.

I walk to my bike with all the composure in the world. I start the motorcycle and head back to town just as the sun starts going down. I realize that I haven't really done anything but stand up for myself, but I still feel absolutely untouchable. Although I guess "untouchable" isn't really the most positive way to be described in this country.

My original intent of resisting is just to make it difficult for some crooked cops. I don't expect it to go that smoothly, and I'm a little confused when they let me go as quickly as they do. I can't say why they let me go, but the more I think about it, the more I like to believe that they were worried about the fact that I'm American. And I think that's what makes it so cool. That maybe, after months of people making fun of me or assuming I'm some war-hungry redneck with a third grade education, for once my nationality has been the ideal one. And there might be something to that. That being American in a different country is kind of like being friends with Joe Pesci in _Goodfellas_. Sometimes, a lot of times actually, he can be more trouble than he's worth. He's embarrassing, he's dangerous, and you often find yourself just as frustrated with him as anyone else is. But every now and then, when things get a little too intense, there's no one better to have in your corner than an unpredictable, irrational, violent powerhouse that has no problem going to someone else's place and kicking a little ass.[55]

Celebration

A couple of days before it starts, I learn that I will be in India for one of the country's biggest holidays, Diwali. No, that's not the one where they throw colored powder at each other; I'm a little bummed about that too. Diwali is the celebration of some Hindu something. Maybe Buddhism. Whatever. Let's party.

India isn't that big on drinking. You'd be hard pressed to find a bar outside of a big city, and most restaurants don't even serve beer. "So how do they celebrate in India?" you ask, indicating your deep-rooted alcoholism.

They celebrate like it's the 4th of July in the 1950s. Families come out to look at the lights and decorations. People sing songs. Kids play with small firecrackers in the evening and the city sets off big fireworks at night. It's just how your grandparents described the good ol' days. Except everyone does a ton of drugs.[56]

Before I got here, I heard from a few people about the easy availability of marijuana in India. My first night in New Delhi a guy in my hostel is eager to share a pretty big bag of weed he had bought that day. I turn him down and haven't really looked for any since, but almost a week later I find it curious that I haven't come across it again. Until someone points out that I have. The most popular marijuana product in India is called "bhang," and although it seems like a marketing gimmick to sell pot to westerners through a not too subtle homophone, that's actually what they call it. It's not strictly weed, it's more of the Indian version of hash—marijuana, ground up into a paste, and mixed with spices. Its primary use is for making tea, and it's sold at pharmacies. As it's explained to me, it's believed to have a dual medical function of both helping the digestive tract and also getting the user pretty baked.

On top of that, while I'm in the state of Rajasthan, I see quite a few older men smoking pipes. At first I assume that it's just tobacco. But after I hear about the bhang, I wise up.

Oh, I wonder if some of those guys are actually smoking pot. But maybe that's wishful thinking, since I just find the thought of old men getting high pretty funny.

Eventually, though, on an excursion through a small village, I get to find out. I have been sign language communicating with a cheerful old man, and he actually offers me a smoke of his pipe. I don't really feel like smoking tobacco or pot, but I just think it is so cool that this guy is offering to share his indulgence with me that I consider accepting it as a sign of gratitude.

"You know that's opium, right?" a friend who speaks Hindi tells me before I take the pipe.

"Opium? But this guy's old. He's not smoking opium."

What my friend says next reinforces the benefits of knowing someone who speaks the local language.

"He, word for word, just asked if you want some opium. Besides, all old guys out here smoke it."

_Holy Hell! They smoke opium?_ _I thought only old men in Asia smoke opium! Oh... I guess I'm not far off, then._

I don't really know too much about opium, but I think it should be standard procedure to make sure that someone knows exactly what they're inhaling before you offer it to them.[57] What if my friend hadn't been there to let me know and I had smoked it? I could have gone into a terrible opium high. Or even worse, gone into an amazing opium high and decide that I now like opium. And it would have been everyone's fault but my own.

"No thanks," I tell the old man, "I'll just stick with my coke habit for now. But if I want to move up to something harder, I'll call you on a burner."

Marijuana and opium aren't technically legal in India, but the police don't technically give a shit. The local governments permit and license recreational bhang shops, opium is smoked out in the open in the villages, and during Diwali it's even permitted in the city. The resulting celebration is a culmination of bright lights, fireworks, and potent narcotics; I guess that explains the origin of those vision quests. It's kind of funny that with the ubiquity of drugs and the lack of alcohol, I have more opportunities to try opium than I have to drink a beer above 5% ABV.

If you ever go to India, they won't have much alcohol, and you really shouldn't smoke opium,[58] so when you go to a celebration it won't be like most other places. It's kind of sad that some travelers get upset since they really can't enjoy an alcohol-free party and are unable to just explore a new culture while appreciating how universal holiday celebrations are. And besides, you don't need alcohol anyway, because as boring as the decorations and songs may be, once that bhang starts to kick in, you're _really_ going to be enjoying those fireworks.

Inevitabilities

It's my fourth day in India, and I have a few hours to kill in the city of Jaipur before catching a bus out of town. I'm walking sort of aimlessly around town, just seeing what I can stumble onto. As I come to the end of a block, I turn the corner, and I freeze. Not 10 meters from me is an old man. He's looking around nervously, like a squirrel in a crowded park, when his eyes catch mine. I won't say that we share a moment, but I _know_ that he can feel the emotion running through me. It isn't anger that I'm feeling, it isn't disgust, it's just confusion.

Is that? Oh my God, it is. Jesus, I'm not ready for this.

The man is squatting, right out in the open, pooping on the sidewalk. I want to tell myself that I'm prepared, that I can handle this. But all I can do is pull a 180 and walk back around that corner to where I have come from. After months of preparation, this is the day I learn that one cannot truly ready themselves for something like this. And I just thank Fate that when I have my first exposure to it, I'm not in a hurry, and I don't need to force myself to walk past him while he stares me down and looks directly into my cowardly heart. No, I am fortunate enough that I can slink back out of view, collect my thoughts, and walk away.

Last Hurrahs

Mumbai is the last city I visit. Not just in India, but on my entire trip. I'm flying out of Chhatrapati Shivaji International at 2:45 on Sunday morning to go home.

Friday night at 10:00, 29 hours before that flight, I am coming back to my hostel with some friends after dinner. The four of us walk inside and are greeted by the hostel owner.

"I just got a call from a friend of mine," he tells us. "He's a casting agent and they need some extras. You guys want to be in a Bollywood movie tomorrow?"

.

Twenty-six hours later I'm on my way to the airport. When I board the plane, I'm covered in dust, confetti, and glitter, have an insider's peek at India's newest blockbuster, and have 500 rupees in my pocket for the day's work.

"What happened to you?" asks an amused British businessman sitting next to me on the plane.

If you would like the real answer to that question, I suggest you watch the Bollywood film _Joker_. But as far as I'm concerned, the truth is that the biggest stars in India heard about my departure, and they all decided to get together and throw me a going home party.

# The End

That's it. Nothing else happened. If you want me to give you some crazy story that happens on my trip home and ties all these stories together, like at the end of _Big Fish_ when all of the Dad's tales culminate at his funeral to prove that he was only mostly lying to his family, I honestly can't. But I dishonestly can. So I dishonestly will. Everything in this chapter is a lie, especially this sentence.

Callback

My flight from India to America has a four hour layover in London. We touch down in Heathrow, I go through security, and I get to my gate three hours before departure. The terminal is a ghost town, and the only people at the gate are me and a little old lady standing behind the counter. Before I can even take a seat, the old lady addresses me.

"Are you waiting for Flight 593?" She asks.

I glance down at my ticket to check.

"Yeah, 593," I answer.

"It appears to be overbooked. Can we interest you in taking a later flight?"

"How much later?" I ask.

"Tomorrow, 10:00 am. We can give you a voucher for a free flight in the future, a hotel for the night, and an upgrade to business class on tomorrow's flight."

I've never flown business class, not even when I've travelled for work,[59] so I'm just about sold.

"That could work. Where's the hotel?"

"East London!" She says, cheerfully.

"Great!" I say. I can tell it's great because she's smiling.

And it is great. For those of you who have never been to East London, and I suppose I should include myself in that group, because I am, as I stated earlier, making this story up, it's a beautiful area, and is in no way a crime-ridden hellhole. And the hotel must therefore be appropriately spectacular.

The woman says she'll put me on tomorrow's flight; she jots down an address for the hotel, opens up a public transportation map, and then draws directions to show me where to go.

"There you go. Reservations will be in your name. And if you follow the signs at the end of the terminal, they'll lead you right to the tube," she says.

"Tube? What's the tube?" I ask.

"You know, the Underground."

"Underground?" I ask again, feeling like I'm getting sucked into an Abbot and Costello routine.

"The Underground. It's a railway."

"Underground railway? Who the fuck do I look like? Harriet Tubman? Just tell me where I can catch the Metro."

"Just follow the signs with the train pictures," she says, trying to get rid of me.

I walk down the terminal, follow the signs, and catch a train pretty quickly. I'm not hauling my backpack around because it's still checked with the airline, and all the signs in the terminal are written in English, so this is the easiest I've gotten around in months. The train moves surprisingly quickly from the outskirts of the city into the center of London, but one station before I need to transfer lines, the train stops, the doors open, and they don't close.

A voice comes over the PA, but between the intercom static and the cockney accent, I have no idea what's being said. But I see all of the other passengers walking off the train, so I follow them, and the platform fills with people as the cars empty out. Once everyone is off, the doors close, the train pulls away from the station at a slow crawl, and I'm left standing on the platform, having no idea where the hell I am. This seems familiar.

"Ty!" I hear someone yell.

I look to my right and see one of the London-based friends I'd met in my travels. Which one specifically? Oh. Um, let's go with one of the girls from the train in Hungary. Wait, no, I think those girls were from up North. How about Emma, the Brit I met in Vietnam. No... I might want to use her later in the story. Let's go with Jen, the Aussie expat I met in Amsterdam who helped me to bandage a drunk girl.

"Jen?!" I shout.

"Sure, why not!" She says as she makes her way over to me, "What are you doing in London?"

I tell her about my layover and that I'm trying to get to my hotel.

"They put you up in East London?" She asks, "Very posh! But I think they've shut this line down for the day. It looks like you won't be able to take the tube there. I live just a few blocks away though, you can come to mine and we can call you a taxi."

"Can't I just hail a cab on the stree—"

"Don't fucking question me, Yankee! You're coming to my place!" She commands as she leads me to the escalator.

We catch up on the past few months on the ride up to the surface. And when we reach the top of the escalator she asks a question that had probably been nagging at her since she saw me get off the train. "By the way, is that all you've got to wear?"

She brings up a valid concern. Less than 24 hours ago I was in Mumbai, and was dressed appropriately; wearing shorts, flip flops, and a T-shirt. But now I'm in London in late autumn, and I'm dressed very poorly; wearing shorts, flip flops, and a T-shirt.

I had noticed that it was getting colder and colder as we rose to the top of the escalator, but I didn't bother to say anything. By the time we get out of the station, though, I'm freezing.

"Come on," she says, "I'm right up the street."

We stroll at a quick pace to her building, reach the front door, walk up a flight of stairs, and she lets me inside her apartment. Before I can even compliment the place, she walks directly into her bedroom and walks out with a pile of clothes.

"My boyfriend is just about your size. He's got too many clothes as it is. Take what you want so you can get to your hotel without freezing to death," she tells me.

"Thanks," I tell her. "You're sure he won't mind?"

"No, I don't mind," I hear from a man's voice in the bedroom in an accent I can't put my finger on, "I need to get rid of a lot of that stuff anyway."

Out of the doorway walks a tall, dark, handsome man. A familiar man. A man who looks like he's happy to have a girlfriend.

"Andre?" I ask, recognizing my once-heartbroken Portuguese friend who I'd met in Zagreb.

"Ty? What are you doing here?"

"I've got a layover. What are you doing here?"

"I live here! Jen's my girlfriend. We got back together."

"Wow! What are the odds that you two knew each other?" I ask.

"Slim! Nearly impossible," he exclaims.

"Yes, that sounds right. Especially because you said your girlfriend was German."

"Oh, right. I forgot about that. That was apparently a lie, because as you can see, she is in fact Australian, and lives in England."

"Well, it's great that you guys got back together," I announce, "I'm so happy for you."

"Yes, it is great." Andre says, "So great, in fact, that we're going out tonight to celebrate and watch a football match. Please, I hope you'll join us. You can even spend the night here."

"That sounds fun," Jen says, "except Ty has a hotel booked for him in East London. We don't want to deprive him of that."

"Wow, East London," Andre comments, "Are you rich?"

"Nope, just lucky I guess. But I'd love to go out with you guys tonight. I can just catch a cab to my hotel when the night's over."

"Great!" Jen says, before changing the subject to my outfit. She passes me a pair of jeans, a button down shirt, some socks, and a jacket, "These should fit you. You're probably freezing."

Andre hands me a pair of shoes, "I've always had a good time when I wear these shoes; they remind me of Portugal." he says. "But I think I've just about outgrown them. So we'll just have to get every last gram of magic out of them tonight."

I believe the appropriate turn of phrase is "every last ounce," since "every last gram" makes it sound like the shoes are filled with drugs, but considering that Andre has gone so far as to not only learn English, but also learn English idioms, I guess I have no right to expect him to convert from metric, too.

.

We spend the afternoon catching up, and at about 7:00 at night we leave the apartment to go to a pub and watch the soccer game. The cold weather is much more tolerable with Andre's clothes, and the walk to the pub doesn't faze me at all. What does faze me is when we reach the pub and open the door, we see that the place is pretty full, and there are no open tables.

"No worries," Jen tells me, "We can just grab seats at the bar."

I notice something strange about the crowd as soon as I walk through the door, but before I can put my finger on it, Andre grabs my arm and pulls me in his direction.

"The bar's over here. Follow us."

"Why are there so many people? Is it an important game?" I ask him as we traverse our way through the crowd.

"No, it's just a popular place to watch football."

We reach the bar and find three empty seats. We each order a pint, and as we're waiting for them to be poured, I realize I don't even know who's playing in the match. I had never been the biggest soccer fan, but after meeting dozens of Europeans over the past few months, I've learned a lot about the game.[60] I take another glance around the pub to see if I recognize any jerseys or scarves to give me a hint at what teams I'll be watching, but that's when I again notice something strange about the clientele. Almost everyone in this bar is Japanese, and they're all wearing lederhosen.

Wait, is that too ridiculous? It is? Okay, let me try again.

That's when I notice that everyone in this bar is wearing red, but two different shades of red. I start to read people's shirts.

Manchester United. Liverpool. Liverpool. Manchester United. Manchester United. Liverpool.

London must be rubbing off on me, because I suddenly come to a realization worthy of Sherlock Holmes.

Manchester United is playing Liverpool.

I'm not really sure who to root for in this scenario, so to help me decide, I consider the parallels between English football and American baseball. On the one hand, I've heard multiple people describe Manchester United as "The New York Yankees of England," and everyone knows that the Yankees are total bullshit, so I should be able to rule out Manchester. But their competition, Liverpool, complicates matters. One of the few things I know about Liverpool is that the team is owned by the same guy who owns the Boston Red Sox, and it's common knowledge that the Red Sox eat fart-pancakes for breakfast. So I'm really just picking between the lesser of two evils.

After a few more seconds of internal debate, I decide to root for Manchester United, simply because "United" is one of the few words I can say with a convincing British accent, and if one of those soccer cheers starts up, I don't want to be left out.

Our beers are served, and the game is about to start. The following is a timed journal of the match:

**01'** \- _Wooh! Kick-off, this is exciting!_

**11'** \- _Okay, more drinks, this is tolerable!_

**19'** \- ... _the score's still 0-0._

**22'** \- Andre asks me if I'm ready to leave.

"We're leaving? The game's barely started."

"I'm not sure if you know this, mate," Jen tells me, "but football matches last almost two hours. And they'll only score one or two goals the entire time."

And thus I learn another parallel between soccer and baseball—no one really wants to sit through an entire game of either. And as we do in America, we will simply put the game in the backs of our minds, and maybe catch a few highlights later on. So we pay our bill and make our way out of the pub and down the street.

"Where are we going?" I ask.

"How about we do some pub hopping, and then maybe end up at one of the clubs," Jen propositions, and we all agree.

.

I wish this part of the story were a movie, so that I could put a montage here, showing how we go to multiple pubs throughout the evening. Instead, I'll do the next best thing, and just describe the montage. The silver lining here is you get to pick your own music, really anything you want (except The Beatles, we can't afford that). So cue up your brain-tunes as I walk you through the night in a quick, orderly process, and without any of that boring dialogue:

.

Cut to the three of us entering a pub. All the patrons are sitting around a long table playing King's Cup. Cut to those patrons waving us over to join them. Cut to me pantomiming the rules to Andre and Jen. Cut to Jen opening a can of New Radicals beer. Cut to Andre drinking the contents of the King's Cup. Cut to everyone laughing.

Wipe to a new pub. The three of us are kneeling around a large clay pot, along with two dozen Vietnamese people. Cut to everyone drinking from long straws coming out of the pot. Cut to Jen being hoisted up on the Vietnamese men's shoulders—she has clearly won the game we are playing. Cut to everyone laughing.

Wipe to the three of us arriving at a club and getting in a comically long line. Cut to us checking our watches, visibly bored of waiting in this line. Cut to us reaching the front of the line and being denied access as the bouncers point at our clothes—it is evident they think we're not dressed well enough to be here. Cut to us executing a wacky plan involving fake mustaches in an attempt to get in the front door, but failing as we are unable to fool the bouncer. Cut to us executing a wackier plan involving the delivery of an 8 foot party sub to a side door, but failing as we are again unable to fool security. Cut to us accepting that we can't get inside, but proud that we gave it our best shot. Cut to everyone laughing.

L-cut to the three of us at a kebab stand across the street from the club. Why we didn't eat the 8 foot party sub, we'll never know. The music fades out as our conversation takes over. This is the end of the montage.[61]

.

All the excitement had me forgetting that we had skipped dinner, and the three of us are starving. The man at the stand hands us each a kebab. We begin eating, which allows a long enough silence for the kebab vendor to begin his monologue.

"This? This is why I left Tunisia?" The kebab man asks himself aloud. "To serve kebabs to drunks? My brother was the smart one, with his hostel in Croatia. His life must be pure bliss."

"You're brother's working at a hostel in Croatia" Andre interrupts, not understanding the definition of a monologue, "Is it in Zagreb, by any chance?"

"Yes! Zagreb" He says, "How did you know?"

"Just a hunch," Andre says as he looks at me with a sly smile.

I think I get what he's hinting at. We're being served by the brother of our insane Tunisian hostel worker. The one who went off the handle, and who would have broken us into a pub, had we not calmed him down. And assuming the two are anything alike, this guy might just be our ticket into the club. We just need to find the right trigger for his anger.

"Hey, Kebab Guy," I say, "Those guys at the club, they said your kebabs suck."

"Well, let's be honest," he responds, "I'm not exactly selling high end cuisine. They've got a point."

"Maybe they do," Andre adds, escalating things, "But they also said Tunisians suck."

"Oh man," Kebab Guy says, "It hurts my feelings that they would say that, but freedom of speech, right? That's part of living in a democracy."

"Alright, but what if I told you that—"

"Hey, what do you have against that club anyway?" Kebab Guy asks, seeing through our ruse.

"Nothing really," Andre admits. "We're just a little bitter. They wouldn't let us in the club because they didn't like our clothes."

"Oh what the fuck?!" Kebab guy screams, "They didn't like your clothes?! The whole time you've been here I've been thinking how great they look! Ty and Andre, your shirts look like they were tailor fit to your bodies. And Jen, your dress is flirty yet tasteful, and it even matches your eyes! I hope that my children could one day grow up with your sense of style. Those assholes are in charge of the dress code and they can't even tell how fantastic the three of you look? This will not go unanswered!"

I'm not sure how he knows our names, but before I can ask he's already sprung into action. He jumps over the counter of his stand and walks over to the club, and we all follow him. He walks down an alley towards the side door of the club, and is screaming at the security guard standing in front of the side door. He's saying something about wanting to speak with the owner. The security guy in the alley is understandably scared, so he opens the door, goes inside, and locks it behind him. I am confident that this won't deter Kebab Guy. And it doesn't. He squares himself in front of the door, screams at the top of his lungs, and with one solid kick, knocks the door off of its frame. Kebab Guy charges inside the club, and the three of us are left staring at an open doorway.

Instinctively we all run through what's left of the door, and we're standing in a stairwell. Kebab Guy is gone. So is the security guard, having been annihilated by Kebab Guy, chased away by Kebab Guy, or hiding from Kebab Guy. We're on the bottom floor, so we can either go up the stairs, or through a door in front of us. We go with the latter, and find ourselves inside the main room of the club. The music's good and the place is packed, so the three us have a congratulatory group hug, and then start walking to the dance floor.

"Time to put those shoes to good use!" Andre yells over the noise.

"In a minute," I tell him, "I've gotta pee!"

I find the bathroom and reach a urinal. As I'm zipping back up, I hear a familiar voice over my shoulder.

"Ty?!"

I turn around to see Ben, my Kiwi friend I'd met in Berlin, sitting in one of the stalls with the door wide open. There's someone else sitting in his lap facing him.

"Ben, what are you doing here?!"

"Not quite sure, mate! But at least I'm not alone!"

Ben's companion turns around to face me.

"Ty?!" I hear his partner ask, clearly recognizing me.

I look for a moment at the petite face in front of me. Asian features, dark hair, and the tiniest little lump in the throat.

"Feng?!" It hits me.

"You two know each other?" Ben asks.

"Yeah!" Feng says, "We got separated that night in Bangkok. I ended up meeting a really cute guy, though."

"That's great," I tell her, relieved that I didn't ruin her night, "But I'll let you two get back to your business."

I walk out the door of the bathroom, and over my shoulder, as I turn the corner, I hear Ben's fading exclamation:

"Hey, what's that you got down ther—"

I go back to join Andre and Jen. It's crowded, and as I'm walking towards them on the dance floor, I'm bumped into by a muscular guido, or whatever it is they call guidos in England.

"Oi, watch it, ya daft git!" he screams at me.

"Whatever you just said, same to you, asshole," I reply, as my pride gets the better of me.

My response upsets him. He grabs my arm, and again screams into my ear.

"Fuck off, then! Me dad owns this club. One word to security and you're gone! Hope you're not carrying any drugs, they'll have the cops here in a heartbeat."

As he's yelling the music starts to die down in a transition between songs, and Andre, who saw this unfold and is now standing behind me, is able to hear the threat.

"We don't want any trouble," Andre says, "Ty, apologize to him."

"Relax," I tell him, sticking to my prideful guns, "Let them throw me out. It's not like they can arrest us for anything."

"Actually..." Andre mutters, before looking directly into my eyes.

He's making the most serious face I've ever seen him make, and that's coming from someone who's spent an evening drinking with him as he mourned a breakup. That's when I realize the point Andre's trying to make. I'm wearing his clothes. I could be carrying anything. And judging by the look on his face, whatever it is that I am carrying can't be good. I don't know what the rules are in England on being searched by the cops, but I don't want to find out. I need to get away from the guido as quickly as possible, or I risk getting busted for drugs in a foreign country. Unfortunately, the guido doesn't seem to be too accommodating.

"Oi, your mates want to get involved?!" he continues to scream.

And then the rarest of things happens. The segue between songs goes from quiet to silent. For just a few seconds, there is no music in the club, and everyone hears the screaming guido while he continues to threaten me and my friends.

"I'll have the cops bring their hounds, and they'll nab all of you for drugs!"

The threat, which was targeted at only the three of us, was also generic enough to apply to anyone. And given that we're in a club, odds are good that this threat has caused concern to good number of those in attendance.

I've only seen true fear like this once before. Everyone begins moving, slowly at first, toward the doors. But as the crowd realizes the communal panic, the pace picks up to a stampede, as everyone runs to the exits. Fortunately the front doors and emergency exits are large enough to handle such a mass evacuation, and I view this rush as an opportunity to get away from the guido. Unfortunately, he anticipates my attempt to run, and he stays latched onto my arm and forces me against a wall as everyone runs by us. Any illusion of sticking with Jen and Andre is shattered as the club empties out, and I'm left in the confines of a douchebag with roid rage.

"Everyone's left!" He shouts overtop the newfound silence of the room, "Do you have any idea how much money that will cost us? You've ruined me club!"

This guy is gigantic, angry, he's got me in his grasp, and I could be facing arrest for something I'm not even sure I've done. I need a miracle.

"I'd say you've ruined your own club," someone says from behind the guido, "By not training your staff to recognize the understated elegance of your patrons' wardrobes."

It's Kebab Guy. He's breathing heavily, but isn't tired, and looks as if he just dealt out ass-kickings across the VIP section of the club. One of his shirt sleeves has been torn off, he's got a bandana tied around his forehead, and a fork is sticking out of his left thigh. Now he's locked his eyes on the guido.

"This is your club?" he asks.

"No... no, mate." The guido starts to tremble. "It's... it's me dad's club. I just help out sometimes..."

"Thing is, mate, your dad's a bit indisposed right now," Kebab Guy informs him, "It looks like it's about time for you to take over the family business."

The guido lets go of my arm. He braces himself to fight Kebab Guy, or more realistically, braces for the damage Kebab Guy is about to inflict.

"Get out of here, Ty." I'm warned by Kebab Guy. "It's time for me to do some... Spring Cleaning..."

There are a lot of things wrong with that statement, not the least of which is that it makes absolutely no sense. But it's still pretty badass, so I take my cue and leave the club, trusting that Kebab Guy can take out the trash on his own.[62]

When I step outside the club, I see that there are still a handful of club goers, but Jen and Andre are gone. I check my watch, see that it's 2:00 am, and decide to call it a night. I dig the address for my hotel out of my wallet, hail a taxi, and get inside.

"East London," I tell the driver, and I hand him the address.

.

"East London, here we are. You'll have to walk the last two blocks," the driver tells me when we near our destination, "Whole street's taped off. Looks like there's construction. Foot traffic only."

I step out of the cab and it speeds off, leaving me to wander on my own. I survey the area, and to my surprise, it seems rather seedy.

This can't be East London. This is a bad neighborhood. I think the cabbie dropped me off at the wrong place.

I walk up the street and survey the block, hoping that maybe this is some recently gentrified area that's consciously decided to hang on to its lower class aesthetic. I walk past the construction tape that has everything but the sidewalk blocked off, only to realize that it's not construction tape, but police tape. Bad things happen on this street. So I pick up the pace, determined to make it to my hotel, when I pass an alley, and fate intervenes.

I hear a loud commotion, and while I know I should ignore it and focus on going to my hotel, I am still compelled to look. Standing fifty feet down the alley is a man, a young man, holding an Excalibur sword, and screaming. He's surrounded by ten other men about his age, screaming back at him.

Here I am, blessed with a second chance to watch a real live swordfight, only this time Adam isn't here to talk his stupid reason into me, and I am going to catch every last second of this battle. I creep down the alley to get a good vantage point, but stay back far enough to still be out of harms way. I watch the unarmed men inch towards the man wielding the sword, and I prepare myself to witness the greatest thing I will ever see in my life...

.

It's been four hours since the swordfight. The sun is coming up. I'm sitting in the back of an ambulance. I'm not hurt. I am crying. I'm repeating my witness statement to the police.

The battle hadn't gone exactly as I planned. I mean, technically it did. I saw a swordfight. But as is the case with swordfights, a lot of people died in an exceptionally violent manner. Many others were severely injured. Any medical professional could easily diagnose me with PTSD. There is no denying that I will require therapy for the rest of my life. I'll probably never feel joy again. Everything seems wrong.

Too dark? Okay, I'll lighten it up. We can pretend I saw a _Braveheart_ style fight in a back alley that ended with the good guys victorious and unscathed, the bad guys appropriately punished, and me escaping with my psyche intact. But that's probably not what would have happened if I had watched an actual swordfight. I wouldn't be able to handle it. It's why I never finished musketeer training. But considering that this whole story is completely fabricated to begin with, I suppose we can include some inaccuracies as well. So let's say that everything went great.

All of a sudden, I'm happy and smiling. I hop out of the ambulance, remind the police that they forgot to wear their guns to work today, and I hop in a cab to take me to the airport. I have a flight to catch.

I'm dropped off in front of Heathrow two hours before my flight leaves. I walk inside, go to the front counter, and check in to get my ticket. I hand the attendant my passport and tell her my destination, and she begins typing at her computer.

"Hmm... I'm not seeing your name," she tells me. "Oh, here you are. But it says you were supposed to depart yesterday, not today. You've missed your flight."

"I was originally booked for yesterday, but I was bumped until today."

"It's saying here that you missed the flight... Yes, I remember, we gave your seat to a sweet little old lady who was flying standby."

"No, that can't be right. I was bumped. They booked a hotel for me."

"That's not what it says here. Do you have any of the documentation they gave you?"

"Not exactly. I don't think they gave me any documentation."

"They should have. Do you at least have the hotel receipt? We could call and see who made the booking. That might lead us in the right direction."

"Well, I never actually made it to the hotel, but..."

I lose track of what I'm saying as I realize what's happened. The little old lady who told me I had been bumped wasn't an airline employee at all. She was flying standby, and needed me to miss my flight so she could have my seat.

That little old bitch.

"Well, it looks like we can fly you standby today. If you'd want to wait by the gate, we'll let you know if anything becomes available."

"What are the odds of someone not showing up?"

"Anything can happen. Especially with these international flights," she reassures me, "In fact, I even think that the lady who was supposed to get your seat yesterday ended having to stay an extra day because of visa issues."

"Wait, so you're saying that lady's still here?"

The woman checks her computer before answering, "Still here, and even on the flight you're standby for. It looks like she's already got a seat reserved today, but if another one comes available, you have first priority."

"Wow, you sure give away a lot of information about your passengers."

"Yes, now that you mention it, that's rather irresponsible of me."

The woman hands me a stand-by ticket that will allow me to pass through security. I reach to the security lines, ponder my options, and get in the one that seems the shortest. I peek to the two adjacent lines to make sure that I've made the right choice, when I see, in the line to my left, the little old lady who had scammed me out of my airline seat yesterday. She sees me staring at her, recognizes me, and gives me the cruelest smirk I've ever received in my life. She knows what she did, and she's proud of it. She may have taken my seat and gotten the best of me, but I still have one chance at a shallow redemption.

That old bitch is not beating me through security.

I cannot cap off this trip by being fucked over by an old lady, and then getting beaten by that same woman through the security line. I stare down the old woman, and make it clear that it is on. She stares right back as if to say "On like Donkey Kong." The challenge has been accepted, and the duel commences.

I slide off my shoes, or rather, Andre's shoes, and place them in an X-ray tray. I take my wallet and passport from my pocket and throw them next to the shoes. I take off Andre's jacket, and place it on the tray as well. The old lady is keeping pace. Her cardigan sweater is folded up in a tray alongside her purse. She's still taking off her shoes, which works slightly to my advantage, but the sad truth is, she's only got about seven people in front of her in line, and I have ten. The odds of beating her are not in my favor. There's nothing I can do but wait and hope. I just keep looking at her and the long list of posted rules, to see if she's visibly breaking any of them, which might just slow her down.

-COATS AND JACKETS MUST BE REMOVED AND PLACED IN TRAY-

She's okay there.

-NO LIQUID CONTAINERS OVER 100 ML-

_She's probably not in violation, unless maybe her diaper counts_.

-NO ILLEGAL SUBSTANCES OF ANY KIND-

I really don't think she's carrying drugs. How stupid does someone have to be to sneak drugs onto a flight, anyway? I guess people might accidentally carry drugs like me at the club last night, but...Oh shit.

Last night Andre implied that I was carrying drugs on me, but I never got the chance to get to the bottom of it. And if I was carrying drugs, then I probably still am carrying drugs. And if I'm carrying drugs, I have no idea where they are.

Shit. Oh shit. Shit.

My shirt doesn't have a pocket, so the drugs have got to be in the jacket or the pants. I begin to frantically search through the jeans I'm wearing. There's nothing in the front or back pockets. Then I search the jacket pockets. Still nothing. I pick up the jacket to check if there are any hidden pockets on the inside, but don't see anything. I start to touch my crotch, more than the usual amount, to find if there's anything in the lining of the jeans, but everything's as it should be.

I can relax. I must have misunderstood Andre last night, because I never had drugs on me in the first place. With my nerves calmed, I look back at the old woman to see how her progress in line has come. She's only got two people in front of her, and I've still got four. Hope for beating her through the line is beginning to fade. Out of frustration I crumple up my jacket and throw it in the tray on top of my shoes. Or rather, Andre's shoes.

Andre's shoes! That's where he hid the drugs!

I pick them up and begin searching. I lift up the insoles but don't see anything. I reach my hand into each shoe to feel if anything's hidden in the toes, but there's nothing. Then as I pull my hand out, I feel something. Jammed in the tongue of the left shoe, I find a tiny black baggie.[63] I almost panic, but I remember to breathe.

Maybe they won't find it. Maybe I can talk my way out of it. How hard is it to claim diplomatic immunity?

I consider dropping the baggie on the floor and playing dumb, or maybe eating it to destroy any evidence. But then I look back at the old lady and get a better idea. I pinch the baggie between my thumb and index finger, and with a flick of my wrist, toss it at the old woman's tray. I've never been any good at beer pong, so this is a prayer at best, but lo and behold it not only hits her tray, but it lands right in her purse.

The old woman is told to step into the magnetic scanner only a few seconds later, and her purse goes through the X-Ray machine. I watch her intently. She steps out of the magnetic scanner and turns her head to me, about to give me an "I just won again" smirk, when a security officer places his hand on her shoulder. He says something to her, she looks confused, and he ushers her into a back room.

Checkmate, bitch.

I make it through security just fine. I check in at my gate, and then go to a coffee bar to grab some breakfast. I finish eating, sit down at the gate, and wait for any sign of the old lady. Forty-five minutes pass and boarding begins. She never shows up. The line to board is almost finished when they announce the final boarding call. And then I hear the announcement.

"Could any passengers flying standby please come to the desk?"

I approach the desk alone.

"Looks like one of the passengers won't be making it," she tells me as she hands me a boarding pass, "I think it might just be your lucky day."

Boy, oh boy, was she wrong. The flight crashes 56 seconds after takeoff. Everyone dies. I'm writing this book from Hell.

The End, For Real This Time

Wow, that story was way better than telling the truth. I especially enjoyed the part where I framed an old lady for a possible felony in retaliation for her inconveniencing me. But now, I'm afraid, we've really reached the end. There are no more stories. I'm all out. If you'd like to continue reading, you could return to the beginning of this book and read the stories again. Or you could read a different book. Or even watch TV, which is a bit of an upgrade considering that it's not a book. But I have nothing more to offer. So thank you for reading, congratulations on the completion of another book, and if you've been paying close attention to the clues, good luck on finding the treasure.

# Antilogue

Thanks to everyone who made my travels such a good time.

Sorry to everyone I had a blast with but who I didn't write about (especially Pat and Cint—it's criminal that you two weren't mentioned once. Except for here, I guess, where I'm mentioning you guys. Loophole. Apology revoked).

Thanks to M. Knepler for cover art, Carol Nissenbaum for editing, and Smashwords for distribution.

Sorry for not keeping up with my blog, and instead just saving all the stories to my computer while I kept telling myself I'd upload them later, and then just using those stories for the basis of an email-turned-book that never even saw the light of day until way too much time had passed.

Thanks Obama.

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[1] Unless you're a potential employer of mine who has found this book after Googling my name, or, if you're far enough in the future, Hyper-Googling my Space-ID. Then this entire book is bullshit. As are any allegations of veterinary fraud from the Rhode Island District Attorney's office.

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[2] Well, that and because the restraining order forbids any and all contact.

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[3] I'm assuming most slave owners match 401(k) contributions up to 3%.

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[4] When I was about 10 years old, I got a Tamagotchi for Christmas, but when I took it to school to show my friends, I learned that they had all moved on to Pokémon. That immediate drop from pride to futility is the exact same feeling I get after brushing up on my Spanish for two months only to have it rendered immediately worthless upon my arrival to Spain.

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[5] My kind of strip club.

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[6] The only authorities on the entire course are about five handlers walking behind the bulls to make sure they keep moving forward. Given the lack of police and high amount of inherent danger, if you ever want to stab someone in public in broad daylight and get away with it, this is the place to do it.

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[7] e.g. Atlantic City, New Jersey; Lagos, Portugal; and Threedollarhandjob Springs, South Carolina

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[8] Incidentally, that is also the objective order of those countries from best to worst when looking at all conceivable factors.

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[9] You didn't hear it from me, but I've been told that you need to start by talking to Westminster Abbey and her husband Big Ben.

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[10] At least no true Scotsman

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[11] Granted, sheep are pretty far down the list of things we say that West Virginians have sex with.

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[12] Most likely from the Brothers Grimm's Der Scarlett Hande, und Other Taales fore Making Kindergarteners Shizer Ein Zeir Lederhosen.

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[13] Technically speaking, Sydney, Australia is not part of the United States. Although William Taft did stake Kansas City, Missouri against New South Wales in a wager where the President boxed a kangaroo, the KO was changed to a No Decision after Taft's blood tested positive for low-grade methamphetamines, high-grade aphrodisiacs, and an "alarmingly reptilian" white blood cell count. The "Sydney, USA" sign at the city limits and their 2 electoral votes are simply a symbolic measure of goodwill.

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[14] Real football, the kind where you use your hands to carry something that's not round.

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[15] Figuratively

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[16] Save it for Berlin.

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[17] Some claim that frites are from Belgium, but until I see some hard evidence, all credit for French fries is going to their namesake, Frydaho.

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[18] Similar to my date on prom night. Although in her defense, she was lovely until I pushed her into that river and ruined the evening.

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[19] "Whoa, Doc, what was all that 'medicinal' talk?"

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[20] Not to be confused with the Four Questions of Ma Nishtanah, some trendy new Kabala fad.

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[21] Specifically: Where were you, Brandine? Where are you going, Brandine? How long will you be gone, Brandine? Why won't you give me your home address, Brandine?

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[22] Guys, if you ever find yourself in this situation, cheer yourself up by remembering that those girls are probably only tipping 77 cents to your dollar.

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[23] The emotional reaction I see on Ben's face goes from confused to upset to amused in such a manner that there is no way to transfer it to the written word. But the genuine and irreplicable idiosyncrasies of his face upon seeing that bottle makes me confident that despite its simplicity, this is one of the finest gags I will ever pull in my life.

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[24] This chapter should be called "How to Piss Off All of Your Australian and Kiwi friends with just 10 words."

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[25] After they all go to the bathroom.

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[26] I actually was wearing cargo shorts that day. I'm... I'm not proud of that.

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[27] In a similar vein, maybe America should try rebranding our imperialism as British-style diplomacy.

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[28] I may still be bitter.

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[29] It should go without saying that this excludes my grandmother who is perfect.

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[30] BRANDINE! TAKE ME BACK!

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[31] I assume this is where you'll point out my hypocrisy of not wanting to be judged by my nationality in a book where I have dedicated multiple chapters to judging other nationalities. And while I could probably make an argument that it's okay to discuss broad themes about a culture as long as you treat the individuals from that group fairly and without prejudice, it's probably easier just admitting that you're being too much of a smartass.

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[32] I equate being American to being in a really exciting, but really unhealthy relationship. Sure our healthcare system blows, but in a country where anyone can buy an assault rifle, there's an indescribable thrill when you decide to exercise your 2nd Amendment rights and realize there's no safety net of "affordable doctors" to patch you up if things end poorly. We can't legally buy a drink until we're 21? It's ridiculous until you remember the 2,000 mile border with Mexico that supplies our children with all the cheap drugs they'll need, and from dealers who won't check ID. And there's not a single law on the books to keep us from gassing up our Ford F-250s, blasting some Van Halen, and running down the King of England where he stands. Sure, maybe it's a little more pragmatic to move to Canada, buy a Kia, and marry an accountant, but we know deep down that we're always going to feel out of place in a country that values the common North American beaver over the Extraordinary Motherfuckin' Eagle.

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[33] And by "appreciate" I of course mean "support my premise about"

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[34] Or I did a terrible job of explaining it.

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[35] This is hyperbole. As unlikely as a techno dance party is, there are innumerable things that are even less likely.

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[36] A 78 year-old man from the Yukon with the given name of Mackenzie Bowell, but more well known by his moniker "Quickboots." Although he was never formally elected, he was escorted to the inauguration ceremony and sworn in to office when the RCMP got him confused with the true PM elect, Mackenzie King (leading to the now common New Brunswickian turn of phrase, "Grabbing the wrong Mackenzie"). Since taking office, his major domestic initiatives have been considered great successes, generating hundreds of dollars for both the Canadian and upstate Vermont economies. When once asked to clarify his foreign policy opinions, he didn't miss a beat when stating that Canada "should keep Alaska where it is," receiving roars of applause from the members of Parliament, and actual roars from the bears that guard the Tim Horton's where Parliament congregates.

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[37] The US is the only country to pronounce this letter as "zee;" everywhere else in the world they say "zed." And while it may be the more popular choice, I can't help but question it. Why? Why zed?

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[38] Specifically, a man so poor he can't afford to heat his country.

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[39] Or so I'm told. Planning has never really been my forte.

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[40] Fun Facts: Neither Hamilton nor Franklin was ever actually president, but still earned their spots on their respective bills by defeating sitting presidents by one method or another. Franklin bankrupted his business rival, President "Thoroughly Well-Funded" Richard, by questioning Richard's financial solvency through a series of smear campaigns that were run in periodicals and almanacks of the time. Hamilton, meanwhile, challenged President Burr to a jousting match, and although Burr was leading 4 shields to 1 in a best-of-11 bout, he was disqualified after he inexplicably shot Hamilton in the heart.

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[41] Although you know what's way better than a description? The thousands of pictures of the sunrise available on the internet.

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[42] We'll say 10-15 minutes after 5:45, give or take.

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[43] The orphanages seem to be thrown up without any strategic planning. Rachel's orphanage, specifically, is right across the street from an unlocked crocodile farm; it's literally just four large pits of crocodiles kept behind a wide open wooden gate. I refuse to believe that putting a house full of irresponsible, undersupervised, hyperactive 50-pound sacks of meat a mere 20 meters from an unsecured chasm of giant man-eating reptiles was done with any well-intentioned forethought.

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[44] THIS IS HOW MEN SHOW DOMINANCE.

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[45] Did I really just describe myself as agnostic? Holy shit, I'm a douchebag.

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[46] Okay, that part's funny

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[47] Steve Jobs credits his inspiration for the Macintosh computer to an LSD trip he had one afternoon in the 1960's. And I hear that Bill Gates came up with the Zune after a three week crack-binge in '99.

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[48] It's pretty messed up that the sex trade is so rampant in Bangkok, and Southeast Asia in general, that any time we're approached by a female between the ages of 15 and 40 who isn't immediately trying to sell us something, the most likely possibility is that she's a prostitute. I'm not trying to set up a punch line or anything. It's just a sad reality of the region. And if you're ever in Asia and find yourself soliciting a prostitute who's most likely been coerced into the situation against her will, you'd probably be best served by killing yourself, because you're a fucking scumbag. Okay, PSA's over. Sorry about that, let's get back to making fun of inane shit that doesn't matter while putting actual problems back into the recesses of denial.

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[49] i.e. State explicitly

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[50] The following two paragraphs are unreliable at best.

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[51] Technically.

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[52] Or maybe it's a protest against their former British rulers' obsession with lines, permanently rejecting the fascism and tyranny that is "queuing."

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[53] Stop dying, tourists! You make it too hard for me, a tourist, to do irresponsible and dangerous things that I have no business attempting in the first place.

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[54] You have not filled out your ticket request form correctly.

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[55] I realize the irony that it is, in fact, statements like this that make Americans seem like war-hungry rednecks.

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[56] If you consider this caveat to be redundant, then your grandparents are awesome.

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[57] Sure, you could say that I'm responsible for understanding what exactly it is that I'm smoking, but it's so much easier to blame someone else.

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[58] All that cheap, easily available opium that you shouldn't do, even though everyone else seems to enjoy it. You'll never have this opportunity again. No one would judge you for just smoking a little bit. And no one back home would ever find out. Trying some would be such a bad decision.

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[59] Despite the fact that I worked AT A BUSINESS

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[60] For instance, did you know that players are not allowed to touch the ball with their hands?

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[61] Were you guys imagining Third Eye Blind's Semi-Charmed Life? It's not like I was or anything, but if you were you could say so.

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[62] Saying "take out the trash" to refer to beating up bad guys is pretty badass too, but not as badass as Kebab Guy's line.

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[63] What kind of person lets their friend unwittingly carry drugs? Fictional Andre is a total dick.

