10 Breakfast, “Hawaiian Cuisine” Drinking from Around the World

5/18/09

Woke at 6AM, breakfast of EGGS! Holy shitballs, its SaigonIHop.

It’s the duckling eggs, which I can taste the difference, but at least it’s a nice heavy breakfast. It’s mixed with no meats, but with spices and some odd veggies. First time in weeks for this food.

I’m reminded of the beautiful book Shogun, by James Clavelle, which is a great treatise on old-world Japan, and the culture clash of the Portugese and specifically the English. (methinks I need to look into Adsense…haha)

Anyway, the captain is for about 3 months relegated to Japanese foods: slivers of fish, soup, and veggies. He then gets on a portugese ship with a FEAST laid out for him, including “grob” (beer), and procedes to MAUL himself eating half the table, making himself delirious with booze and food, effectively incapacitating him (which was the point of the feast). Its fucking hilarious, ALMOST how I felt.

Anyway, I’m paying for lunch, I want some damn prawns! :D So they cruised to the market, and we’ll see how it goes.

I look down, am writing this blog, and I finally got a little contingent of mosquito’s come through and MURDER my right foot, WTF? I got 8 in a 2” circle on the right ankle, and now just noticed FOUR more in other area’s throughout my right foot…probably a spider actually, with how many bites were evident.

I try to sleep with a blanket (light’ish, but just some silk / mosquito net would be even better) to just keep bugs off, but it gets too hot and half-way through the night I just kick it off.

Sammie had two other “babysitters” come by today to say hi, apparently like eight different ladies helped watch her at different times, and ages throughout her years here. I wanna get all those chicks together and take a picture, its funny. “Yeh people thought that I was her child” is how she describes it many times in how people viewed her and one of the things she noted was that everyone seems the same as from 20 years ago “except maybe a few grey hairs.”

I think that’s funny, as it seems to be the case with almost everywhere how neighborhood really only have a 10-20% (who knows, I’ll have Daniel plow the statistics) rate of people who actually move, change, or rise above the neighborhood “norm” good OR bad, that’s not the point.

Now ima translate all the shit I’ve got in a notebook into blog text.

I will be making video’s, playlists, a blog, then a giant DVD incorporating my (already 6-7 gig of video and pictures) own shit, and sammies (she’s only got 100 meg :D) and narrating perhaps…this will take time, but shit, I’m unemployed :D.

…Lunch, nice and huge, I said I would treat / pay for it, but specified prawns: I want some damn big shrimp suckers. So, we had a nice big bowl (really just for me I guess) and tons of crab, nice huge juicy buggers, of whom were still kicking it when they bought them, as well as when they were in the sink :D

(video is up earlier pre-beach, writing about / compiling your blog weeks after the fact Will screw up your timeline)

10$ for 2 Lbs.

Finished reading the diary type aspect of The Teachings of Don Juan: spirits, peyote etc.

Lost a pair of shorts at the countryside, they can have em :D $15 at TJ Maxx, $40 Retail when in ‘style’ and $2 in Vietnam probably..lol, probably made in the same place. [Edit, Sammie brought them back in a plastic bag, STILL damp…twin cycles please]

Vietnam WILL be China in the next 20 years, so worlds of opportunity await, whether real estate, infrastructure or even just ANYTHING Western to influence the culture will be a booming market. It IS a very long-term vision, as Vietnam is the CHEAP labor OF China..if that’s an indication of a time line, China is barely opening up to Western corporation (they usually smartly, for their own means that is, require a joint venture or equity stake in the China based operations, for EG, Phillip Morris needs to create a joint venture company in a almost 50/50 partnership with China’s major (state owned) Ciggie producer, AS WELL as market Chinese ciggies in other third-world markets…additionally, a funny tidbit, China raised its “ciggie quota” on government workers (how many packs they need to buy a week), lol..what a mess.

Vietnam just lacks a great infrastructure though, but I really saw in the beach trip how some FDI (foreign direct investment) is being plowed into it; very clean, WIDE (not normal for Saigon / Ho Chi Minh), less crowded, and more westernized then Ho Chi Minh, even downtown.

Laid about on the tile downstairs for a hour or so (kinda comfy, maybe it’ll fix my back, lol) and sand dropped out of my shorts..forgot these were my beach shorts. Good times.

Sammie’s sleeping, so I’m still typing away on this. WordPress download != a program to do the blog offline (as I hoped) but a MySQL database readme instructional for transferring your data..which, I don’t have). So this blog will just be a giant single or 2-4 posts. Who knows, maybe I’ll just keep it as ramblings of myself, and wrap it all into the context of life and philosophy.

So I’ve been writing for four hours…time to go see wtf is going on :D

…(missing info from notebook)

When we thought we were gonna just sit and drink mah expensive ($25, 425.000) sake, the uncle comes over and says WERE GOIN OUT!

Queue me sweating balls like crazy walking for eight blocks, ending up at some restaurant with “Hawaii” in it.

Inside we find a bunch of the uncles friends, which is coo. I taught them how to chug from cans, and they killed me at it (well, I suck at chugging, not like its gonna change in Vietnam).

The owner was chilling with us (the older man with blond hair, hahaha): he moved to Hawaii “to open up a restaurant for his wife.” Other guy, the dude who spoke English said “how nice to be his wife.”

This was refreshing having someone to converse with in English, at first I thought he was speaking Vietnamese, it caught me off guard haha. “Do you work here?” I almost said “No Vietnamese.” Then realized what it was, and we were jabbering all night.

When we arrived they were in a heated debate (with bets based on chugging a beer as the outcome) on whether or not your could dial emergency services (EG 911) without a SIM card. They used their own phones, then called a few friends in the US and Singapore to test it, hahahah.

I then leaned back and POP, theres goes a chair rivet, muahahha. The owners face was hilarious, he was going to stomp me into mud. But apparently it was ok for a Vietnamese, just not a big dude like me. Though there were some “heavies” hanging out at the table. Lots of interesting guys, the guy who kills me with chugging (“do 100%!”) was a Dentist, a few business owners, and the English speaker runs a restaurant. He suggested we get dimsum tomorrow. Its some type of gathering, much like the honoring of the grandfather, though this is made up of friends: people were their from Germany, Southern California, Canada, and a few other places.  The VERY old man at the table is in his nineties. Craziness, though he lives primarily in the states (I think).

Additionally, the English speaker from Canada, asked my “wife” (Sammie, HAHAHHAHA, everyone kept saying that) if they could take him out “for the boys only.” Methinks this is some nasty STD related venture, but it was still funny to be taken in. The uncle said he would get in trouble, we joked about the Auntie being a maneater.

CHUG CHUG! They destroyed me. Check the video when I teach em how to chug..beer EVERYWHERE.

When I then showed them how to poke the hole in the can, I sprayed 1/3 of the can all over the fucking WALL and picture…the OWNER!!! THE OWNER!!! HAHAHAH

Anyway, 20 or so Heineken’s later (I think), some good beef with Hennessy sauce (funny), garlic bread, some AWESOME curry (they make some damn good curry here, the lamb shank was INSANE, too bad we were damn full) and some shitty calc (it was like rubber, but I made myself chew), we were good to go. [Edit, I have no idea what ‘calc’ is after reviewing this..and the curry was from another restaurant, lol]

Some pics (TOOOOOTHPICK EPIC FAIL!!!ASDFASDFSAD)