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1st day of school

started my chinese lessons yesterday. it was the hardest thing EVER. I feel like a 1st grader. Everyone else in the class already knows the basics so i am basically the biggest retard in the class. the teacher kept asking me if i was tired. she kept saying i looked tired. then she started using the word tired as and an example to make sentances for class lessons. rough. i am already pegged as the trouble maker. NICE.

my new schedule is:
noon - wake up
12:15-2:00 - lunch
2:00-4:00 - pretend to learn chinese
4:00 -after class pijou
6:00-6:12 - after class power nap
6:12-8:00 - dinner
8:00-until - tomfoolery!

a little hollywood goes a long way

So like my second day i was chilling at tommy's and nick was going to drop off some pictures to a magazine. he asked me if I wanted to come along. I had fuck all to do so i went along. the magazine was thats beijing... its kinda like the la weekly or creative loafing of beijing. expat happenings social stuff. anyways nick told them how i just moved here from la working on cartoons. The editor Cate asked me if i would do and interview for the kids section. i said sure then forgot about it.

A week ago she dropped me an e-mail to see if i was still up for it. I said sure. They gave me an address and said she was going to have art students at an international college ask me questions. I showed up and the neighborhood looked like new jersey. it was this section of beijing where all the international business people lived. They had built american style suburban houses as far as the eye could see. There were even western style grocery stores??? the school in this neighborhood was the international school for the expat kids.
It was the most amazing school i have ever seen. which isn't saying much because my highschool was built in like 1919 and was a dump!

Anyways i was expecting something casual but it was in this tiny little atrium with about 50 students who asked really sophisticated questions about the process of animation and movie making. It was harder than a job interview! they intimidated the fuck out of me. I was fine once the valiums kicked in :-)

Afterwards I had lunch with some of the school staff. They discussed a film festival they are having. They asked me if i would be involved with the film festival and possibly even be a judge. Then they gave me this awesome photography book of photos of china.

I am busier now than when i was working fulltime!

un-professional man of leisure

so people want more photos and drunken stories. the camera is broken now ( not the holga )
might need to get a cheap used digital for parties.

so anyways get back from hanoi go from the airport to tommys and crack one of the duty free bottlesof jim beam. half a bottle later we run out of ice so its time to head out for dinner with our buddy hightou. the crew was hitou, his girlfriend, our neighbor cassie, tommy handjob, and myself. we had a dinner here in dongzhimen hit this schwar place which is like spicy kebabs.
we had tripe and lots of funky stuff. cassie then made the mistake of mentioning she had never been to huxleys the best bar in beijing, and had never tried absinthe before. we felt as though we had a lot of responsibility that night to take her under our wing.

we hit huxleys and the 10 kwai whiskey gingers and absinthe shots started flowing. everyone came to meet us for a beverage to welcome us back. needless to say it was a blur.

10am I get a text message from this girl i met who works at an animation studio. saying "your were drunk last night night, ha ha ha"

i then read another text message from 4:50am saying "wow, you sure are forward. um, lets just be friends, dont text me any more tonight, i need to sleep."

uh-oh. not remembering any of this i check my outbox to see what "forward" sounding text i sent. my outbox was full so i still have no idea what i sent at 4ish am. what make this most embaressing is i only met this girl once briefly and in a quasi semi professional way.... which has now become quasi semi unprofessional.

what is worse to call some one drunk at 4am or text message them. in the usa we dont have to worry about the text thing because no one really does it.... i think the text thing is worse that leaves a semi permenant embarressing record of your drunken retardedness.

cool hand luke.

We invited a bunch of friends to the casa last night for movie night. we had a good mix of chinese and western friends. we all watched cool hand luke. i felt it was very successful.

Since it is hard to actually go to a theater here and enjoy a film we are going o do this every sunday. we are going to try and do 2 movies. a classic comedy and a classic.

in addition we watch talladega nights everyday. multiple times a day i watch the baby jesus grace scene.

back in beijing and the strangeness

unity with variety.

I took a composition class with this great artist nathan fowkes and one of the things he kept emphasing was the concept of unity with variety in artwork. during the class he used a life example of a recent vacation he took to cambodia. how it was exciting to leave normal everyday life ( unity ) for cambodia ( variety ) but after a while you can't always have variety you need unity.

I have left the variety of hanoi and i am now back in the unity of beijing. it is a very strange feeling to leave a place like hanoi and land in beijing and right away get together with friends and be welcomed back.

I remember before when i spent 7 months wandering around the world how strange everything felt when i returned.

In some ways everything is still very new and exotic but I also feel like I have a sense of belonging here.

last night in hanoi at highway 4.

not much details. same debauchery different night.

me and tommy headed back to highway 4 drank a bunch of local wine. tommy still felt the effects of the food poisoning. i chose to fight fire with fire and drink wine made from the essence of 4 snakes. i then rode bitch on the back of a motorcycle out to the bars again.

If your ever in hanoi definately go to highway 4. the owner dan is good people and the bar is full of good people.

not much happened drank too much whiskey. woke up late spent the last of my Vietnamese dong so last minute i had to exchange a $100 bill for enough dong to get out of the country. the problem is it is very hard to exchange dong to chinese RMB so we had around $85 worth of dong and only one place to spend it. the duty free shop!

"I LIKE TO STOP AT THE DUTY FREE SHOP!"

We stocked up on jim beam but most importantly we got kahlua which is rare in beijing.
And like the Dude I like to enjoy a "Caucasian" every once in a while.

Which will probably end up as a blog post in itself where me tom julia, and cassie never made it out saturday night just hung out watched clerks 2 and drank white russians.

do expat men suck

a friend showed me this it was published in a local beijing expat magazine:

http://www.cityweekend.com.cn/articles/cw-magazine/blogger/do-expat-men-suck/

comments?

uncle ho

today I went to see the preserved body of ho chi minh. they have his body preserved like lenin and mao. even through apparently he expressly requested cremation before he died. it seems that was selfish of uncle ho and didn't really serve the communist ideals so they preserved his body for the people.

not really sure how to describe it you basically went to this massive place. very official and communist looking. big line. no cell phones pagers allowed we had to walk through a metal detector. then walk along get in a bigger line out side the actual building which looked like a half size mint building or something. as we gi in there are no hats to be worn or hands allowed in pockets. the funny thing i noticed were all the vietnamese people fixing their hair before they went in front of uncle ho. the room was dark and cold and in stone on the walls side by side was the hammer and sickle next to the vietnamese star. uncle ho was laying in a glass coffin like snow white with this warm light illuminating him. he was rather peaceful. all the vietnamese found this to be like a religious experience.... I found it to be totally fucking spooky and this shit is going to give me nightmares for weeks.

now I cant wait to get back to beijing and go see uncle mao's corpse.

back in hanoi

we came back to hanoi yesterday. we took the minibus from the airport to the old quarter right away we were hounded by the tout cheap hotel room cheap hotel room. we decided we were gonna stay in the same place we stayed last time so we walked over to the hotel. the whole time one guy followed us saying "cheap room" "where u frum" "room close 8 dollah"

We get to the hotel we stayed at last time and they were full except for a $25 room... damn.

so we finally succumb to the tout and follow him to hotel which is "very close".10-15 minutes later we arrive. they show us the room. it was pretty kick ass. $8.... nope it was $12.
we decided to take the room anyways for 2 nights. then we went off to grab a bite to eat and crashed early. today the guys at the hotel try and sell us a tour to halong bay. we tell them we already went to halong bay and leave to go home tomorrow. suddenly they remember their hotel is all full and booked up and we need to leave they find another hotel for us and tell us they take us for free. motherfuckers.

basically they decided that there was no extra money to be made by selling us bus tickets or tours that they should get rid of us and get someone fresh meat with lots of money to blow.

They take us to a new hotel on the fringe edge of the old quarter the size of a closet. luckily it does have 2 beds in it but it also has a mirror on one wall next to a bed that is coincidentally the full size of the bed. nice.

today when i got back the guy at the desk ask me you have "friend".

For the most part the guesthouses for the backpackers have a no "special friend" policy.
and the others are intended solely for the purposes of having "special evening visitors".

So far most of the other guests I have seen are your generic mid-life crisis 40-50 year olds with 4'11" 95lb girlfriends of the local variety.

we are now staying in the later type of hotel. but it is our last night and the room is only $10 and is 100m from highway 4 the cool bar we hung out at during TET.

saigon

chilling in saigon wating to get the hell out of here. this place is like bangkok with out the charm. granted i have only been here 2 days and have had food poisening it still kind of sucks. I fly to hanoi manana then i get fitted for my custon silk pj's. then fly back to BJ on friday AM.

current location:

N 10.76881
E 106.69373

saigon

We arrived yesterday in saigon after an 8 hour bus ride.

saigon is big and dirty. similar to bangkok and los angeles.

not much to say we arrived late like 4pm and then sat in the hotel and enjoyed A/C for a couple hours then went had dinner. i ate seafood rice ( big mistake )

we then went looking for a cool bar to enjoy a refreshing cold beverage. we went to one right in Pham Ngu Lao which is the heart of back packers central. we were hanging out enjoying our beverages when like always 2 vitnamese girls came over. " ware u frum" "oh amirca... USA"
"how long u vietnam" yada yada yada.

one girl starts feeding me peanuts from the dish. she then sticks one way inside my mouth and screams that i bit her! she then pretends like she is dead from the bite then goes to
another table to cry and nurse her wounds. I am not sure what the scam was or what the
protocal was. was i supposed to buy her a drink? was i supposed to call an ambulence? was I supposed to give her $60 to rent a motorbike? I got the fuck out of dodge is what i did!

we then wandered around a bit more had a few more beverages and called it a night.

I woke up at 6am in pain. I have fallen victim to saigons weapons of ass destruction. They have some how discovered the technology to weaponize seafood rice. I hear the secret technology involves not properly refridgerating shellfish.

hindsightbeing 20/20 when i hit the pharmacia maybe i should have purchased a little pepto when i was busy stocking up on valium.

The other possibility is that the seafood was perfectly alright but there is part
of a finger in my stomach tickling my colon causing me to go to the bathroom every 12 minutes.

dalat

n 11.94141
e 108.43202

you guys can make you own map I have been poisoned.

le petit paris

Me and tommy are now chilling in dalat. it is in the central highlands of vietnam. its more forestry and cool tempatures than the rest of vietnam. the funky thing is it is kind of small and there is a half size eiffel tower covered in red lights in the middle of town. the think its the little paris of vietnam. its also the honey moon capital of vietnam. sooo it's not much of a party place. we did manage to find a vietnamese disco full of 12 year olds drinking heinekens and smoking like chimneys. they were dancing there little hearts out singing all the lyrics to "i need a hero" or whatever the name of that crappy song is! whatever it was it was on the soundrack to shrek2. good times.

this place actually kind of reminds me of banner elk N.C.. its kinda of hippy and all the people selling crafts on the street keep saying "you buy, you buy, it's kitchzy!"

kitchzy? how the hell did they learn that here?

Today we cruised around on motorbikes into the country looked at coffee fields and there are tons of green houses here growing flowers and who knows what else.

tommorrow we take the bus to saigon....err. my mistake i meant to say Ho Chi Minh City ( they dont seem to like it when you call it saigon ). anyways the buses here are like easy bake ovens on wheels. today i hit the pharmacia and stocked up on diazepam to get us throught the next 5 days of travel to saigon then 1000km back up to hanoi.

5 days left and then the vacation is over then its back to beijing and back to worrr.... oh wait. nevermind.

still in nha trang.

long story. kind of like that trip to indonesia in 2002

Bus left for saigon yestday at 7am. I was out a bit later than I originally planned and I wasn't on the bus when it left. Tom and I have split up temporarily and I have a new travelling companion.

Drop me an e-mail if you want the full story.