Africa -

Unfortunately the last time around, I was on a whirlwind trip around the world that gave me little time to sit down and blog. Most probably, the same will be the case with this forthcoming adventure in Africa.

I will, however, learn from my mistakes and write down a journal on my blackberry during the evening down time in the middle of the African bush. This way, a copy-paste is all I have to do for the blog entry to be uploaded. Hopefully, this idea will work and I'll be able to happily continue to blog as I used to do in the good ol' days.

Down to business:

Africa! Africa! Africa!

I'm so excited about this trip! I'm leaving in two weeks with 3 good friends (Eduardo, Vanessa and Guissepe) all the way from Nairobi, Kenya to Cape Town, South Africa. Over 3,000 miles of who knows what on the way south-

The whole route is by land which is the exciting part! From Nairobi we are supposed to take a shuttle that crosses us into Tanzania (the town of Arusha) to spend the night. Since it is mainly rainy season in Kenya / Tanzania in April, we are planning on driving a rental from Arusha to Mbeya close to the Malawian border. If that's not possible for whatever reason, we will take the uncomfortable and long bus ride. Once having crossed into Malawi, we will spend a couple of days relaxing on the lake before getting on our very own 4x4 straight down to Cape Town visiting some amazing sights along the way like Victoria Falls, The Okavango Delta, Soususvlei Sand Dunes, The Makgadikgadi Salt Pans, The Fish River Canyon and the city of Cape Town.
Truly, an unforgettable journey (hopefully on the positive side and we don't all get eaten by alligators or bull sharks in the Zambezi River). I'll post a few of the pictures I've found online of various destinations!
Enjoy!

NAIROBI, KENYA

SENGA BAY, MALAWI

LIVINGSTONE, ZAMBIA / VICTORIA FALLS, ZIMBABWE

GWETA, BOTSWANA (MAKGADIKGADI SALT PANS)

OKAVANGO DELTA, BOTSWANA (MAUN)

SOUSUSVLEI, NAMIBIA

CAPE TOWN, SOUTH AFRICA

The road leads to Cambodia...

The following morning we woke up, had our breakfast and headed out to the border town of Aranyaprathet. I had met a cab driver the night before and agreed on meeting at 9am in front of our hotel so that he could drive us for 5 hours to the border with Cambodia. Truthfully, it was a long and uneventful ride (except for the Lays Pepper Steak potato chips which were GROSS). Once at the border, everything began to fall apart. We crossed the border by foot and made our way under the archway that read “The Kingdom of Cambodia” adorned with an almost rubberish replica of the ruins at Angkor Wat. Once we crossed the arches that greeted us into the ‘kingdom’ we exchanged our Thai Bahts into Cambodian Riels so we wouldn’t get screwed later on with the exchange rate. From there we asked where we needed to go for immigration with our E-Visa’s since we had done the whole process online well before the beginning of our trip. I began asking guards if they knew where we had to go and they all answered 100 meters. We kept walking and they kept saying 100 meters. Well, whatever. Maybe that’s all they knew how to say. Before getting to the 700 meter mark, we passed a casino which we entered and left almost immediately. We could have won a 20 riel jackpot!! (4,000 riel’s = 1 US dollar). Anyway, we finally found the hot and dusty office where we would do our immigration process which was done fairly quick. While in the office, we met this guy who kept insisting he was part of the department of tourism and wanted to get us on a taxi that would drive us all the way to Siem Reap. We all had specifically read that we should not trust any of the touts at the border that would offer rides to Siem Reap. The warning said they were dangerous and that some people were driven for over 15 hours when it is a 3 hour drive. Well, our gut instinct told us to go with him since the French guys in front of us seemed to know the guy from a previous visit they did. Once in the taxi, the visuals, the smells, the colors, the sadness, the poverty, the shear fear of death (our death) took over. It was truly for the first 10 minutes a terrifying experience. We weren’t sure where they were taking us, their English was poor and we had two drivers but only one steering wheel which made it a bit uncomfortable.
As you might have guessed, yes, we were murdered by savages.
Nah, we were SO tired, we fell asleep after seeing the amazing colors of a Cambodian sunset. I’m not sure how we were able to sleep since the roads were all of dirt with holes sometimes 2 feet deep, small cliffs the taxi’s wheels would sometimes hang off of and motorists that payed no attention to the fact there was a car coming in the opposite direction. I guess we got used to it being that humans are creatures of habit. Finally, after three grueling hours of “driving” we made it to our hostel in Siem Reap. Once inside, we were met by Mara, the nice Cambodian drag queen receptionist that was so kind as to give us a room with a faulty air conditioner. Mara was thin and tall and very lady-boy looking. Jorge loves that shit so he was in heaven with all of these characters he could dissect and analyze and talk to and bla bla bla bla.. I could have cared less about Mara. For all I knew, she was a bitch who wanted to screw us over by giving us a hot room. Fuck her!
On with the story, we went around the reception desk and up the stairs to the second floor. Our room was spacious and private and clean. We were quite happy to leave our funky trails of shit in the toilet after a day full of enjoyable driving. Once downstairs, we went to the bar to get some food. AMAZING FOOD BY THE WAY! Whoa, Cambodia has amazing food!! Really! Anyway, once downstairs, we met the infamous Chan Dara. This man is Jorge’s baby daddy. They will one day have children and a fence and a dog and a backyard filled with skulls in the vicinity of the Killing Fields Cambodia is notoriously known for. In the mean time, I’m still waiting for my yummy food as I stare at the indoor pool with desire. The pool looked like a KFC bucket of chicken in the middle of a street in famine stricken Mozambique. Seriously, I wanted to sleep in it. After my food of course. Well, once we were all satisfied, we made our way up to our hot room and showered and slept and died and went to heaven and back.
The following morning, we woke up early, showered, had breakfast and met Mr. Yin Yan. He was our driver for the day which would take us to see the marvelous ruins of Angkor. We definitely got much more than we bargained for. A driver, THE WHOLE DAY, for 5 US dollars a head. I mean a person, not that he gave us head for 5 dollars each. Whatever, you know what I mean. Ridiculous! Well, we said hello, he said hello, then we had baby chickens and monkeys and lived happily ever after.
Next, I’ll tell you all about Angkor Wat, Bayon and Ta Prohm, the wonderful Spider-Girl, the afternoon at the pool, the scam market, and the most amazing fried rice I have EVER had in my life.

Stay tuned!

Bangkok, Thailand

*WARNING*WARNING*WARNING*WARNING*WARNING*

If you are easily offended, do not continue reading although I really wish you would. This information is essential for you to make up your mind and get your ass over to THAILAND NOW!! This country is AMAZING! Let me just say that when I left off (last night) I never imagined what the following 24 hours would be like.

Once I got off the computer, Jorge, Alberto and I walked outside and began to walk toward Patpong (the crazy sex neighborhood in the Silom area of Bangkok) to find a bar and party! We weren't looking for sex. I swear. We just wanted to have an authentic thai experience on a friday night! As we walked down Rama IV avenue, we were approached by tons of men and women asking to take us to whore bars, offering massages (we still don't know which kind), sex DVD's, really cool shirts, thai food, etc etc etc. They offered us everything you could possibly imagine. Now, this is the story of what happened to us. One of those fascinating men that have nothing else to do but convince dumb men to visit the tittie bars did exactly that. He convinced us to go watch a ping pong show. For those of you with little imagination, a ping pong show is one where a female inserts a ping pong ball into her vulva and squirts it out at amazing speeds possibly leaving you one-eyed for the rest of your life. I'm going to be crude and raw from now on. Again, if you are easily offended, stop here (please don't!).

We are walking up a flight of stairs at this point, toward a dark bar with loud music, and once we pass the door, a bunch of slutty women cheer us on for having walked in. They were nasty ugly women (or men we're not sure what they were) dancing up on stage. One of them was laying on her back pushing something out of her pussy (it was certainly not a child) but we were whisked away too quickly to notice what it was. Once we were sat down in a corner, a big tough lady placed a tube labeled "#1" on it. It was our table number but dammit, why 1!!?? Anyway, there was this particular lady or lady-boy that kept staring and smiling and saying things in thai we didn't and didn't want to understand. Our waitress arrives and asks us what we would like to drink. I ordered a jack daniels and coke and Jorge & Beto got Tiger Beers. While that is happening, two ladies come up to the three of us to ask us to get them coca cola's and we oblige (hesitantly) and get them their drinks in order for us to leave us alone. Jorge looks up and says "mira eso!" and it was a fat slut blowing out like 20 candles with her pussy and a straw. How the fuck do you blow out candles with your twat? I mean, was she queefing?? The bitch blew out candles! 20 of them!

The show was about to begin (although it never fucking stops here) and then we see a woman shooting a ping pong ball in the opposite direction of us. We laughed although we couldn't see it really shoot out of her pussy. Then almost immediately, this woman lies on her back and puts a beer bottle (a clear empty beer bottle) up her pussy (you could tell she was placing it in a comfy place) and gets up to begin peeing this dark liquid. We realized soon after that it wasn't pee.. She had been holding some sort of dark juice up there and was finally letting it out. When you thought you'd seen enough, she did it again. At that point, I couldn't stop laughing. The hooker that loved me came down from stage to harass me for a drink and put her non-existent tits against my shoulder almost hurting me. She was smashing them against me with full force. Then continued on to grab my balls and pinch my right thigh. What the fuck?!!??!! Ok, I'm over it but damn, its just a fucking drink. Get it yourself. Whatever, all of a sudden, this woman puts a banana in her pussy and shoots it (I MEAN SHOOTS IT LIKE A FUCKING RIFLE) at Beto but falls short of landing on his lap. Instead it falls between his shoes (she shot it from about 15 feet away) to have the bitch's administrative assistant (that's what we called her since she was the one making sure the floor was tidy and neat) pick up the damn banana and suck it in front of Beto!! We had had enough! I could not stop laughing! I had a woman/man who knows what next to me pushing her tits against my shoulder for a drink, a fat slut blowing out candles with her pussy, another one peeing dark juices in a bottle, the other one was a firing squad of ping pong balls and then the unheard of; bananas shooting out of a pussy as if they were cannonballs!

This is the best part. Thailand is cheap (not dirt cheap but cheap nonetheless) but these bitches robbed us! 300 Baht (Thailand's currency) per drink (3 for us, 3 for them since i ended up getting the whore her drink) plus 2,100 Baht to watch the show. 3,900 Baht for being in there 15 minutes and it is 32 Baht per $1. That makes it $122 dollars. =( Oh well, we got the chance to experience something as demented as that. Good times.

We needed a break so we went to have dinner. The food was actually really really good! It ended up being something like $25 dollars for the three of us at a really nice place. Jorge had to shit in the bathroom and was actually escorted into the women's bathroom since the men's one was busy. No worries, we have all been shitting everywhere. Beto shit over everyone we flew over between San Juan and Bangkok and my farts have made people faint in each city. However, the food is great here in BKK.

Once gone from the restaurant, we entered another nightmare. We went to a disco called DJ Station. PACKED PACKED PACKED. We could not walk. I mean, we got 2 drinks for free after paying a 200 Baht cover charge ($6) but totally not worth it. The music was from 2002 and a bit tacky. Before we knew, it was 4am all we had gotten out of the night was a pussy juice covered banana. YUM.

We called it a night.

The alarm never went off. Jorge woke up at 9:45am and we took it easy. We showered, had breakfast, and got on a Tuk-Tuk (like a motorized bicycle/charriot) to get to the Grand Palace. Once there, we were truly amazed at the architecture and the grandeur of the place. I was a bit let down by the emerald buddha which wasn't all that great. Other than that, we had a great time and even got a bit of sun. The details of gold, glass, emerald, rubies and what not were so intricately put together that you at some points stand in awe of everything around you.

That's it. That's all I have to say about that. Those things are truly not the ones that stay with you when you travel. They are just a beautiful memory. That's all.

Anyway, once gone from the Grand Palace, we walked in the direction of the river (close by) and found this market/pier/slum/tarot reading area/dead chicken spa/jade selling lady/everything you could fucking imagine place. Anyway, getting to the point, we met the coolest lady-boy selling food. Yes street food! It was cheap and DELICIOUS and looked really really scary but we wanted to try it. She/he asked us in great english what we wanted and we just hugged her and took pictures with the food-serving drag queen! Even the lady behind the counter was striking poses with us for the camera. Amazing place! I had some sort of sweet and sour chicken with rice and vegetables (who knows if it was a rat) and haven't had diarrhea! I do have my imodiums at hand though. Just in case. Then we met the coolest tribal ladies on the street! They are from the neck tribe (the one that puts rings around their neck and then they look like old horny giraffe women) from up north in Thailand. They sold us some hot hats! Wait till you see them on us!! One of them gave me a bracelet for free.. She was ugly and sweet! Her sugar was raw! Really raw!!

Anyway, once done with lunch we walked toward the water and almost instantly decided to take (in my opinion at the moment) those cheesy touristy boat tours. At the same time though, once I put my first foot into the boat and saw Jorge and Beto behind me I knew this was going to be memorable and amazing!! It really was. I laughed my ass off but not before we saw a Komodo Dragon on an abandoned staircase staring at us as we drove by. It was huge and the driver motioned to us that it would strike if we got close. Crazy right? A fucking Komodo Dragon (Indonesia is close and supposedly they live on Komodo island; it must have been smuggled into Thailand somehow)!! Well, the boat tour took us through these neighborhoods of high middle class and dirt poor homes. It was interesting to see the class differences and the way everything in Bangkok is situated on water and canals. At one point we reached a sort of fish farm (huge cat fish that seemed to almost attack) where for 20 Baht (.80cents) you could feed them with bread. Those mutilated mutant fish wanted to piranha your hand off. The driver was fucking nuts trying to feed them up close and personal. Eventually, we left (not before i was knocked over by a splashing fish cause I got scared that it would jump out and bite me. I even think I screamed a little bit) and went toward the floating market. What a bunch of bullshit! The floating market is a place where tons of ladies sell their goods (vegetables, fruit, textiles, etc) on small boats in crowded tributaries of the main river that crosses Bangkok. Instead of the floating market (which is how it was sold to us), we were taken to an empty river with one lady all by herself selling keychains and wooden elephants. I think she also had a purse but Jorge bought it. We even think she came out of the water (sort of like "it's a small world" from disneyworld) and she is the official river seller.. She'll sell you anything.. She even sells ping pongs for shows. The bitch has connections.. Anyway, once back on the pier, we took a tuk-tuk to Patpong (the slutty area) to do some shopping since we saw some really cool shirts there the night before. Nothing was really open though so we opted to take the skyway metro so that we could get views of the city. In the process we witnessed fireworks for the King's 80th birthday! That was really cool. I was exhausted.

After that, we took the train to Siam Square where we found a mall that Beto and Jorge had been raving about because they saw it on Friday on the way from the airport to the hostel. By pure coincidence, we ended up in a shopping mall that hosted the largest aquarium/oceanarium in all of South East Asia, it sold Lamborghini's and Maseratti's on the 4th or 5th floor and had a department store called ZEN (the complex next door) that has 20 floors! I mean seriously, fuck Macy's and Sears and Nordstroms. 20 fucking floors and everything from spa's to gym's to diesel and energie clothing to picture frames, puma shoes, cd's, you name it. Before we even went into ZEN, we had had dinner at the mall. Jorge and I had Pad Thai which was yum yum sucky sucky 'fai dala' (five dollars) and Beto, being picky, ordered fried rice that tasted like air and water combined (nothing at all) and a rare specimen of meat that I could swear belongs to the liver of some stray siamese cat that was found somewhere down the road. He thought it was tofu, I'm sure it was rat or cat liver. Anyway, after that, we came 'home' and I began to write. I hope you enjoyed the post! Hopefully, I'll update you tomorrow night. It's 12:30AM (Sunday) in Bangkok and 11:30AM (Saturday) in San Juan/New York.

Again, lots of love from fucky fucky yum yum 5 Baht Thailand!!

Hong Kong, China

What can I say? The flight was long? Very long? Well it was. I have never felt so incredibly desperate on a plane i must say! It took 38 hours to get to Bangkok including the layovers in New York, Vancouver and Hong Kong. Thankfully, our layover in Hong Kong was long enough to spend some time there and completely feel overwhelmed by China. Obviously, our adventure began in San Juan on Wednesday the 21st of May. We were ready to go as we chugged down our food from Wendy's and flew to New York City. On that San Juan - New York flight the funniest thing happened with a flight attendant named Patricia. One of the attendants, standing right next to me, in fact, yells over the center aisle "Hey Patricia, go over to that overhead bin and pick up that shit" in a very thick (VERY THICK) ebonics accent. It was hilarious and definitely the first of many incidents worthy of a classic Beto cackle. After laughing a bit, we finally arrived in JFK airport(delayed) and met up with Erin. Once with princess Erin from Samawi we changed terminals so that we could make our New York - Vancouver flight. This began to get annoying at this point.

When we finally made the flight, it took us five and a half hours to reach Vancouver. Delirious and tired, we began to act stupid and sleep in the hallways of the terminal which we had arrived in. Here you can see me having an attack on a Canadian wheelchair. Mind you, it was 5AM San Juan time and 2AM Vancouver time. Cathay Pacific (the airline we flew all the way to Bangkok from New York) feeds you about 7 times per flight so on top of that we were stuffed.
When it was time to board the Hong Kong flight (at 3AM Vancouver time, 6AM San Juan time) we were exhausted. We had played 'Who wants to be a millionaire' about 73 times on the plane, watched a number of movies and tried to sleep as much as we could. This next flight of 13 hours was going to be hell. As we take off on the Boeing 747 that was going to get us across the Pacific Ocean, it finally hit us we were on our way to China.

At some point on the flight, I fell asleep. I'm not sure what time it was but I know I was knocked out. Eventually through the flight, I wake up feeling refreshed and energized only to see on the flight map that we were over Alaska. ALASKA!!! Fuck!! I really wanted to have slept at least 8 hours or something. Only 3 hours had passed and 10 to go!! So I fall asleep again. This time waking up about 2 hours later as we flew over melting icebergs off the coast of Russia (the Siberian part). It was very interesting but we were still 8 hours away!! AAAARRGH!! The third time I fall asleep on that goddamn uncomfortable chair I'm woken up by a flight attendant asking me if I wanted juice or something. I had hoped we would be closer now. We were over Osaka, Japan this time! I thought we would be fairly close since Japan and China are near eachother. Guess again!! 4:45 minutes to go!! This was truly hell.. I would probably do it again but I would need to be extremely well prepared knowing now how long this shit is!

Finally, we are ready to land in Hong Kong! Wow! The feeling was amazing. To know you are literally on the other side of the world from your home and that you are experiencing something completely differente culturally is incredible. As we disembarked our plane, we went straight to customs and immigration and then off to the metro which took us a while to find in the airport. We also left our backpacks at a locker so that we could walk freely through the city. Once all was set, we began our journey into the city of Hong Kong.

It was hot!! REALLY HOT!! We were sweating like asian whores in a sweatshop. No pun intended but I'm not kidding! Hong Kong was a huge metal sauna. After walking a bit, we found our way to the Peak Tram downtown so that we could get the world famous views from Victoria Peak down into the city. The view was amazing!



Once down from Victoria Peak, we took a taxi to Mong Kok. A shopping neighborhood that was still quite traditional albeit having shopping malls and all the comforts of the modern world. The driver was an asshole and didn't understand us or us him for that matter and we were both speaking English. I am not being culturally insensitive. ;D

Lunch was gross! Beto wanted to puke and I couldn't eat it all.. We wanted Pepper Steak with pork fried rice. That shit doesn't exist in China. We had something that looked good but didn't quite taste that good. To the point that Jorge had Indian fast food! Something made out of potatoes and some cream (every chinese restaurant seems to have the word cream in it for some reason; Fong's Cream, Han Cream, Star Cream). The cream looked like it came out of Patricia's bottom but anyway, that's another story for another day. They even had dead ducks or pigeons or something at the mall.. They had their heads attached!! So crazy!! I loved the dead bird on display!!
After we ate, we went to H&M for Beto to find something and we ended up shopping for different things. Jorge and Beto bought music and I bought two shirts that were super cheap and super cool! We saw the famous game rooms where Chinese/Korean/Japanese kids go to spend their afternoons after school picking out those weird bunnies and rabbits that they like so much i.e. pokemon's, pikachu's, whatevers..

As usual, late, we ran like crazy people to the airport and got there in the nick of time. We almost missed our flight searching for the lockers which were in Terminal 2 and then running to Terminal 1 where our flight departed from. Our gate was number 29! We had to literally run and I had to leave the boys behind to make sure I could hold the door if they began to close the gate! Anyway, we made it safe and sound to Bangkok (I slept throughout that whole flight) and I can tell you that I love it already! Our hostel is really cool, modern and industrial looking with free internet, a cool little bar and the whore/slut/bitch district is only a few blocks away!! I want to see Thai prostitutes in action!! It's world famous. Believe me people, I do not pay for sex but I definitely do want to see what all the fuss is about. We're off to see the hookers the wonderful hookers of Bangkok! Until tomorrow when I'll give you the BKK update!! Love to all!!