Raving and Drooling – A lion’s tail

I have a stupid grin on my face right now.

I can’t really explain why. I’m just happy. I just got a wonderful email from a friend in Japan that I met on my travels, and another from a friend in China that I met in another country. These people were both touched by me in a certain way. I introduced the Japanese friend to a fantastic Japanese anime producer who he was not aware of, and he told me that after watching the anime I recommended, he was absolutely in tears because it was set near his home town and represented a lot to him.

The Chinese friend, I guess I just touched as being an unusual person. We hung out with a lot of people that weekend that I met, but somehow, he was by my side the whole time as we talked furiously about photography and religion and travel.

Then the was the Vietnamese friend that I met, and we keep in contact from time to time and she is keen to catch up the next time I’m in the country.

I’m planning to visit at least two in the next year. One I hope to visit in a couple of months, the other in about a year, both in their home cities in China and Japan.

I always remember when my wife had her penpal Hiroko that she talked to in Japan. She used to exchange snacks with her initially and later when Hiroko got married, she lamented on how sad she was about having to quit the navy in her job as a helicopter pilot to go home and be a housewife to her husband and have his children. I always thought it was sad that she didn’t remain in contact with her, but as much as I am impulsive and flighting, I guess my wife was more, because despite Hiroko sending us a beautiful, framed copy of her wedding photo, I never heard anything of her after that. If my wife ever conversed with her any further, she never told me.

But I don’t want to do that. When you meet interesting people, especially from far away, you should nurture those relationships. You should stay in contact. I know it’s hard to know what to talk about with someone you’ve met for only a brief while or not at all, but sometimes you have to find things. Friendships can grow from the simplest roots and online and letter-based friendships are often some of the strongest because sometimes there are things you write in letters that you might never say in real life. They may be simplistic summarisations, but sometimes that’s the sort of expression that you never give to your feelings in real life.

People are important, and the ones afar more so than ones close sometimes. I once heard a beautiful quote in a Chinese movie that I once wrote on this site.

“Friends afar bring distant places near”

You know how it is when you meet people in life ? Sometimes you meet fascinating people, but you lose contact. You think you make a connection with them but you just don’t keep talking to them. It’s just a thing where you have a good time together and then life moves on and you don’t speak anymore. But then there are those other people who still look you up years later.

In the last week I’ve had two people that I met a year ago on the same camping trip in Vietnam email me. First Lil (not her real Vietnamese name) emailed me to say hi and let me know that she had a new email address and to make note of it so we could continue to chat and said that she hoped I would be back in Vietnam again soon and we could catch up for drinks and see what each of us had been doing.

Then there was Ben (also not his real Chinese name) who emailed me telling me that he’d finally finished his year-long tour of Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Malaysia and had returned to his family home in China. He asked if I was coming to China any time soon as planned and said that he’d love it if I stopped into Chengdu where he lived and he could show me interesting places and introduce me to delicious local cuisine.

So there you go. Sometimes just going on a camping trip can make you friends for life. Friends who remember you years later and still want to catch up and see what you’re doing. Cheers to meeting great people on holiday. I’ll drink to that this labour day weekend ! Here’s a photo of Ben and Lil on the day I met them both.

This will mean nothing to those of you who do not know who Cuca is, but if you are a regular reader of my blog then you probably know, because I have spoken about her many times.

She’s just some girl who despite being born in the 21st century, loved early Morning Musume songs from the previous one. She was only eight years old when she put herself in front of a camera and did her first song to the world, covering Morning Musume predominately, but on occasion other groups.

Cuca became very popular over time, with many songs achieving several thousand views. I mean, Ray William Johnson is the most famous person on YouTube with 1.7 billion views at the time of writing, but he’s been going for much longer and his silly comedy videos and repeats of other YouTube videos obviously appeal to a much larger audience.

But this week, at the age of 10 or maybe 11 years old, Cuca achieved a milestone. She reached over FIVE MILLION FUCKING HITS !!!

How the FUCK a ten year old girl who just covers dance tracks from a group that performed before she was even born manages to get FIVE MILLION HITS I cannot imagine, but do it she has.

Every single video she uploads has people screaming “Please Tsunku, sign Cuca to Morning Musume… she is a genius !” but so far this hasn’t happened due to her young age, but I know that sooner or later the Cuca phenomenon will be too big and some big labels will be scrambling over each other to say “Cuca.. we want you… we NEED you”.

I won’t go on at length, but I will just say this… Cuca is a phenomenon and I am constantly jealous, wondering how I can raise some beautifully talented child who will achieve five million hits on youtube before her 11th birthday.

So here’s a video of Cuca. It’s not her best video or most special, but it is the video that pushed her over that 5 MILLION HIT barrier.. so it’s pretty special and I dearly hope that her parents realise how incredibly famous she has become and encourage her talent… but in the meantime….

CONGRATULATIONS ON FIVE MILLION VIEWS CUCA !!!

Cuca’s five millionth-viewed video was this one.

I was reading The Australian on the train today (yes, in broadsheet form, not online) and I encountered this article by this woman about how Australia’s overseas arm of the ABC, The Australia Network was a pile of shit and should be scrapped to “save the country a few million dollars”. I cannot provide a link to the full article as a large number of the articles in The Australian are now only available to paying customers, but I will include the first two paragraphs here.

We have been travelling around Asia for the past three weeks. In some of our spare time, we have tuned into the ABC-produced Australia Network channel aired on local television, as well as a number of other channels.

What is my conclusion on the Australia Network? Repetitive, pointless tosh. It is completely unclear who the intended audience is, the mix of programming is quite bizarre and the news services are patchy, unreliable and boring. Frankly, a lot of the output looks cheap and dated.

She goes on to cite that it contains an eclectic mix of many outdated dramas, children’s shows and “cobbled together news from various sources”, and says that Sky provides a far better Australian channel. Now I can’t comment on that for a simple reason; despite how much time I’ve spent in Asia, I’ve never SEEN Sky’s channel because it’s only available in premium subscription packages in expensive hotels. It is not part of the bog-standard satellite package that pretty much every person in Asia has access to like The Australia Network is. I was so incensed at her denigrating comments about AN that I immediately ripped out my laptop to fire off a letter to the editor, which I have included below.

In regard to Judith Sloan’s article “Please axe Australia Network” (April 17, 2012) I must say I disagree wholeheartedly. As an Australian who grew in PNG with just the ABC, I have in recent years been living in various countries in South East Asia, and I consider the Australia Network an invaluable cultural aid to foreigners. In Saigon I enjoyed the excellent tennis coverage in my favourite bar. In Bangkok I lived in a cheap short term apartment and one of my greatest pleasures was having lengthy political debates with my Icelandic neighbour who astounded me with his intimate knowledge of Australian politics, contrasting Gillard and Rudd to Abbott and rattling off the names of some politicians that even I wasn’t too familiar with. When I asked him how someone from as far away as Iceland who does not use the internet could acquire such detailed knowledge of Australian politics he said simply “We only have two English channels here in the building; HBO and the Australia Network. I hate movies, so I watch AN all the time”.

The fact is not everyone uses the internet, especially to research foreign news, nor does everyone have access to Sky as Ms Sloan suggests unless they are staying in a high class hotel. The average person DOES have access to the Australia Network though and I frankly believe that the interest in Australia and the tourism it generates among the local people in Asia are well and truly worth the running cost of throwing a bunch of re-runs and some “cobbled together” news stories on the air. Get out of the Hilton and into the suburbs, Ms Sloan. People watch AN, not Sky, and it’s an invaluable Australian cultural resource to the people of Asia.

Now, for the more scathing commentary. I don’t know what sort of posh hotels Ms Sloane has been staying in on her whirlwind tour through Asia, but having stayed in many cheaper hotels in 5 different countries I can assure you, I have never seen Sky’s channel offered, so I can only assume she was in the Hilton or Sheraton or some such crap. Normal people don’t have access to Sky. It’s not available in bars, cafes, or most hotels and it’s not a part of any of the standard satellite TV package that I’ve seen Asian locals subscribe to. Perhaps it is available to people who subscribe to specialised English packages, but obviously that is NOT the greater Asian community, is it ?

And to complain that the programming is out of date.. what the fuck ? Who cares ?! It’s in a foreign country for fuck’s sake. They don’t care if the episode of Neighbours they’re watching is TWENTY years out of date. It still gives them an impression of what life in Australia is like. I think episodes of Sea Patrol and The Wiggles would be most welcome to Asian families who want to expose their children to a little more English programming so that they can practice their English language skills, and other than shit like HBO which is just back-to-back American movies, there is little to no other English content available to Asian viewers, and if they can get exposed to Australian TV as part of their standard package then that’s a massive boon to Australia.

As to the mix of programming.. well it’s one channel isn’t it ? Of COURSE it’s an odd mix of programming. It’s not meant to be for you DUMB SHIT fucking Aussies to catch up on the latest programs on because you’re TOO GODDAMN STUPID, lazy or disinterested to bother exploring any Asian TV shows. I certainly can’t see Ms Sloane ducking down to the markets or to a local DVD store and picking up some great Asian dramas or movies (subtitled in English of course). No, she seems to seriously expect to be able to find the latest Australian programs being aired overseas so that she can actually visit Asia without ACTUALLY having to experience Asian culture. Fuckwits like her REALLY piss me off. What the FUCK sort of Australian on a “three week tour of Asia” (what the fuck can you even SEE of Asia in just three weeks anyway ?) has enough free time to even sit around watching TV in the first place, let alone wastes their goddamn time watching TV programs FROM THEIR HOME FUCKING COUNTRY ?!?!

Jesus, fucking Christ. What a moronic bitch. It’s not FOR YOU, Ms Sloane. It’s FOR the Asian people, and they don’t mind if it’s a bit out of date or the programming is varied. Most of them are probably struggling to understand the English language and want to watch it in an attempt to better understand colloquial language and customs and see what life is like in Australia.

I mean for fuck’s sake… In Saigon, it was the TV channel that was aired pretty much 24/7 at my favourite bar, because it was one of the only English-language channels available in a standard satellite TV subscription, and when the bar was quiet I used to regularly sit there watching Australian sport, dramas, documentaries and such while putting away a few beers. Noone fucking HAS Sky because it’s expensive and costs extra on top of your normal plan. The Australia Network however is ubiquitous.

I myself was sitting in Bangkok when I saw a promo for the Kuranda Scenic Railway come onto The Australia Network and I immediately went “Oh wow… Kuranda. I’ve always wanted to go there”, and when I got back to Australia, the first chance I had, I hopped a train to the other end of the state just so I could ride the train that I saw advertised on TV in Bangkok. In fact, I’m writing this very article on the Sunlander train as it heads back down the coast after a lovely week in Cairns which is FULL of Asian tourists I might add.

So there you, go. If The Australia Network managed to convince me, as an Australian resident who spent years in Far North Queensland, to board a train and spend a week in Cairns, spending money on travel, taxis, hotels, bars, food and souvenirs, then surely the amount of tourists it brings to Australia from Asia and the money it injects into the local economy must be incalculable. If it costs us “a few million” to throw a bunch of worn-out docos, dramas, kids shows and a little bit of current events and news onto an overseas TV network, then surely it is worth EVERY GODDAMN CENT when it brings such cultural awareness to the local people.

Goddamn stupid bitch needs to get out of her ritzy hotel and go visit some real Asian households and she’ll quickly realise that The Australia Network is not only one of the most valuable English-language cultural resources available in Asia but that it’s the ONLY one most people have access to. Maybe if she spent more time talking to local people and less time sitting in her fucking hotel whinging that they only have years old episodes of Sea Patrol on TV for her to watch, she might have actually learned something about Asia, instead of wasting her time trying to watch Australian TV in a foreign country. Fucking moron.

NOTE: This story, like all my stories on this site, is loosely based on reality. That means it’s not literally true. It’s just a story that I thought would be funny if I told it in this particular way. Don’t take it literally and don’t accuse me of recklessness or breaking the law because you have no idea what parts are true and what are pure fiction.

So I walked down to a greasy, dirty little Thai bus station in Phuket and showed them the receipt I’d gotten from my hotel concierge. Some Asian woman looked at it and then looked up at me and said “Ok. You wait outside”. I asked “Which bus is mine ?” She squinted at me and said “Outside. Bus will come”. Ok, I thought, and went outside and laid all my suitcases against a concrete pole. I sat precariously on a tiny stool, and fearing that my large western body was surely going to smash it into a thousand pieces (I’ve had this happen to me before in the sort of countries where people like to sit on tiny plastic stools) the woman rushed out with a bigger chair and ordered me to “Sit here”. I took the chair and sat down.

I was hungry. I left my less important suitcases and just grabbed my laptop and camera bags and walked to a nearby McDonalds. While I don’t make a habit of eating McD’s when I’m travelling in a foreign country, I was feeling pretty sick with a cold that I’d picked up a few weeks earlier in Penang and recent motorbike riding in the rain had made it worse, and when I’m sick I just don’t feel like shitty Thai food. I never understood why every other country makes Thai food that is so much tastier than what the Thai people make. It’s like they need to import foreign chefs to make their own national dishes or something. The fucking McDonalds was closed. I bought some overpriced snacks at the convenience store and wandered back to the bus stop. Some Indian guy was sitting on my suitcase. I didn’t really give a shit and sat down right beside it just so he became aware that he was sitting on my suitcase. Seems he didn’t give a shit either because he ignored me.

The bus came. It was a little minibus. I hoped that this was just the bus to take us to the bus station where we would board a real bus. It wasn’t. We spent the next 14 or so hours on this overly cramped minibus hugging our bags to our chests in order to give us enough leg room to avoid a serious case of deep vein thrombosis. I ignored everyone and tried to sleep. I was sick as a dog and I coughed and hacked and snorted snot back into my nose the entire way. I hope I made everyone sick. Not because I’m an asshole but at least it’ll be a lesson to them to always ask what sort of bus they’ll be travelling on before booking a ticket.

Some time around 4am we pulled up at a little cafe. The driver yelled loudly to wake everyone up and we all piled out of the bus, rubbing our eyes and wondering what the fuck we were doing. He came around and handed everyone arrival forms for Laos and told us in broken English to fill them out and put them in our passports because we’d be at the border in a couple of hours. I filled mine out without really looking because there was this gorgeous Korean girl sitting at a table of Koreans nearby. I knew they weren’t all on my bus so I wondered where they’d come from. Gathering my courage I walked over and smiled and sat down.

“You are Korean ?” I asked like an ignorant fuckwit. “Do you like So Nyeo Shi Dae ?” The girl gave me a puzzled expression and asked “Girls Generation ?” I rolled up my sleeve and showed her the tattoo I’d gotten in Bangkok of the awesome girl group’s name written in Hangul and surrounded by a love heart. Her eyes went wide and she said “Amazing !” and I grinned. “Normally only Koreans call them by their proper name, but you have it tattooed in Hangul. That’s so cool” she said. I rattled off the names of various other Kpop groups that I had seen in concert and I think I saw one of the Korean guys beside me facepalm. The driver came along and told us it was time to get back on the bus. Only the girl got back on with us. The other guys were travelling separately.

In the morning we arrived in Vientiane. I had no idea what the fuck I was doing there or what I intended to do during my stay. I had told everyone I was going to Cambodia, but for some odd reason at the last minute, I ended up booking a bus to Laos instead. Fucks me why. Fate maybe. We sat there at the bus stop yawning. The girl was there again. I took her photo a couple of times. I don’t remember what I said but I remember that she laughed easily. I was infatuated, though I couldn’t really think of much to talk to her about other than her telling me that she was travelling through Thailand, Laos and Vietnam on her own, which seemed like a rather bold adventure for a single girl who couldn’t be more than about 23 at most.

Some Canadian guys told me they were going to rent motorbikes and ride up to Vang Vieng where they had tubing parties down the river and you could consume lots of magic mushrooms. I wasn’t that phased with the idea of tubing. I’d done that shit before since I grew up on a boat as a child. The magic mushrooms sounded alright, but I was sorta interested in finding out what the Korean girl’s plans were. Apparently my assumption about Vientiane being her destination was incorrect however, because the driver suddenly yelled out “Back on the bus” and she said “Sorry, I have to go” and picked up her bags. I looked at her and my mind reeled. She wasn’t staying in Vientiane with us ?

Fuck. What should I do ? I couldn’t let this beautiful flower escape without at least torturing her to death with my boring stories and anecdotes about my love for Asian pop music. I stood up and looked from the bus, to my 5 bags and back again. Should I just grab my bags and jump on ? While wondering simultaneously if that was too spontaneous a decision even for me, and whether it would be awkward if the bus driver asked what the fuck I was doing back on the bus and where I was going and I had to sheepishly answer “Wherever that Korean girl is going”, the bus closed its door and the driver started the engine, and the Korean girl waved to me from the window. Shit. Too late.

I sat back down with a thud and looked at the suddenly very boring Canucks that I was sitting with. “Oh well” I said with resignation. “Let’s get some bikes and go to Vang Vieng then”. We wandered around looking for bikes that weren’t so shit that they had 60km limits imposed on them. We found a place that rented some brand new Suzuki scooters since we were told that dirt bikes had to be rented at least 3 months in advance. Ignoring for the sake of brevity various stories about me getting totally lost trying to find the hotel that I’d already booked and convincing the owner to let me keep my bags there and not charge me for the night I’d already paid for until I returned at some indefinite point in the future, I joined my new Canadian compatriates and hit the road.

It was pretty late in the day, and the guys were on a tight schedule because they only had three days before their plane back to the land of elk and bison, so we rode at breakneck speed. I had only ridden a motorbike twice before in my whole life, but I was pretty sure that since my parents were bikies and that I’d ridden on the back of my mum’s harley many times on the way to school that surely I must be a natural at it. Besides, I’d survived traffic in Penang AND Phuket. That had to account for something. Unfortunately, what we didn’t know was that the roads in Laos were utter shit and they just stopped sealing them at random.

So even though I was riding second in line, I was going far too fast when the guy in front held up his hand to warn me of something. I realised what as I saw the bitumen under me disappear and the rocky dirt road underneath started some 6-8 inches lower. Specifically, the way I saw it was as I was flying over the handlebars, only to land unceremoniously, face-first, several meters from my bike. I quickly got up and checked my expensive Nikon that I had around my neck… Apparently not smashed. I said “I’m OK” without even checking and rushed to my bike, noticing blood running down my leg. I just covered my knee with my pants and hoped it wasn’t bad. We hailed down a guy in a truck who couldn’t speak English and after some miming, he got out and hammered my foot peg back into place so that I could change gears again and we all got back onto our bikes and rode off.

Not long after that, when the sun had gone down fully, I repeated the whole exercise a second time, only at a higher speed this time and with more damage to the bike. I landed sort of sideways this time and I heard my bag hit the ground hard and wondered how many of my laptops and tablet computers I had just destroyed. I emptied blood out of my shoe and got back on, but it was fairly evident that I wasn’t going to make it to Vang Vieng at this rate, so we stopped at a small hotel in a nearby town after finding a medical clinic where some Lao doctor patched me back up and wrapped a crude bandage around my leg. We haggled mercilessly with the woman at the hotel over the price, since she wanted to charge us an insane $8 for a room for the three of us. Not that I didn’t have money. But that’s just what you do over there. We got our way in the end and secured the room for about $6.50 a night. We ascended the stairs and I took a shower to wash the blood off me and threw away my tattered pants, which were the only ones I’d brought. One of the Canadians offered me a pair of the ridiculous baggy Turkish pants they had, which they had bought for a friend, and I accepted gratefully. In return I offered them some acid and marijuana that I’d smuggled into the country.

I still remember clearly the way my blood had run cold when the pilot came over the P.A. as we were about to touch down in Kuala Lumpur that drug smuggling carried the mandatory death penalty in Malaysia and I wondered if I was going to die in a foreign country when they discovered the 26 sugar cubes of LSD that I had in my suitcase. Fortunately they don’t check shit and I had walked straight through the “nothing to declare” line and noone was even there to look questioningly at me and wonder why I had purple hair and a bleach blonde beard despite having black eyebrows. So the Canadians dropped two cubes each and I dropped three and we smoked weed on the balcony and pondered the universe until almost dawn before getting back on our bikes and heading off just as the sun was coming up.

Unfortunately, about 30km from our destination, I got a flat tyre and fell behind. They didn’t stop for me as I’d apparently been enough trouble for them at that point and tubing and magic mushrooms were more important than this weirdo Aussie they’d picked up along the way like a leech that had attached itself to their testicles in some icy cold billabong. I limped into a service station and bought a bunch of Che Guevara stickers for my stuff and had a couple of beers while they put a new tyre on my bike. Refreshed, I continued on my way. At some point some young kid pulled up along side me and greeted me and asked where I was going. I prefer to travel alone as this sort of thing happens more often. He said that his aunt ran a hotel in Vang Vieng and suggest I check it out. I followed him there and checked in, and then decided to go into town. I was starting to feel more than a bit fucking sore by this time.

I didn’t see much of Vang Vieng because one of the first things I discovered was this little bar called “Happy Pizza” that was pumping out loud techno music and exclaimed proudly on the sign outside “Weed, Opium, Magic Mushrooms”. Obviously, I went inside. Inside they had a sign spraypainted on the wall graffiti-style that said “Don’t ask us to turn the music down, we like it like this”. Cool. My sort of place. I tried everything on the menu, and everything OFF the menu that I could think of that they might be able to provide me. Not once did they ever say “We can’t get that”. Everything I asked for, was delivered within 20 minutes for a reasonable price and of a high quality. I spent every waking moment in that bar for the next week.

On the second night, I was sitting there using my laptop, puffing away alternatively on joints of weed and opium and washing it down with magic mushroom shakes and then snorting lines of meth off the table, when the DJ leaned over and tapped me on the shoulder. I looked back and he was holding the line-in cable from his sound system. He asked “You want be DJ tonight ?” Blinking at him I almost refused, thinking all I really had to offer was a hard drive full of Kpop and I knew they were strictly a hard-house sort of establishment. Then I remembered some Japanese hard trance stuff I had by DJ Shimamura and some other artists. I accepted the cable and plugged in and started pumping it out. Two of the guys got up from their little table behind the counter where they gambled over card games and gave me a big thumbs up. Apparently I had their seal of recommendation, because from that moment on, I was DJ every night after about 8pm.

With the aid of copious amounts of drugs, I was able to mostly ignore the now searing pain in my chest (which I was later told at a Laos hospital was because I had broken two ribs), and it was only when I decided that I really should get moving and try and see some other countries that I realised how much I was going to miss the guys there. Because I spent so much time either DJ’ing or sitting behind the counter snorting lines of speed or smoking bongs (You were only supposed to smoke joints in the visible area of the bar, despite the fact that the bongs were hanging on the walls as decorations), most people who came in automatically assumed that I was the owner. I remember approaching a couple of gorgeous girls from Sydney and telling them I was journalist and asking if I could ask them a few questions and take their photo and they said “Oh, we thought you were the owner”. When I told the staff that it was my last night and I was leaving in the morning, they all came outside and lined up for photos together and with me. It was very special and I almost cried and felt so sad about having to go.

Getting back to Vientiane and not having any drugs harder than a large supply of weed I’d bought before I left, I basically just lay in my hotel room in agony popping codeine and smoking weed and sleeping all day for two weeks solid until I got over the worst of the pain. I fapped a lot and thought about the Korean girl and wondered how my time in Laos would have been different if I’d followed her down the rabbit hole instead of the Canadian guys who had ditched me. Who knows. Next time I’ll follow the girl instead of the curly haired freaks, I’m sure. I might not always remember the girl, but I will always remember that split second of indecision where I was caught between wanting to follow her to the ends of the earth and wondering if that might be too crazy a thing to do. Next time I have that choice, I’m going down the rabbit hole after the girl. You only live once.

But the real moral of the story isn’t about split second choices or how much fun you can have snorting lines of meth off a dirty table at an opium bar in the countryside of a foreign communist country. The important moral of this story is:

“Don’t ride a motorbike in Laos at night”

Here is a picture of the Korean girl to prove to you what a heartbreaking moment it was to see her disappear in that dirty minibus. So at least that part of the story is true.

People like cute stuff, right ? Everyone likes a girl looking kawaii, especially if they’re Asian. Well, let’s try and show my vague knowledge of East Asian fasion culture and see how badly I can embarass myself.

So where do these kawaii looks come from ?

Well, most people who have had any passing interest in Japanese culture or anime are probably familiar with the “Lolita” look. It’s a popular look that is very cute and very out there (to foreigners at least). It originated in the 70′s but was really popular during the 90′s and I guess is still popular today among a certain subculture. The Lolita look has many variations centering around old style Victorian clothing with long dresses and frills.

The most famous is “Goth Lolita” where the girl dresses in all black dresses, often with white lace trims, but otherwise goes for a very black look. “Sweet Lolita” or “Classic Lolita” is the pink or brightly coloured pastel version of this and is also downright adorable. There is also “Kuro” (black) or “Shiro” (white) Lolita which represents the colour of the clothes. What’s the difference between Gothic Lolita and Kuro Lolita ? Well, Kuro is more toned down. It probably has less frills and is less fancy.

Other styles include “Princess Lolita” (often featuring royal-like jewellery), “Sailor Lolita” (as in sailor-style outfits), “Pirate Lolita” (no seriously, I’m not making this up), “Country Lolita” (for that “just rolled in the hay” look) and various others.

What other looks are there ? Well, on the less extreme side of things, one popular look in Japan is the Gyaru look, sometimes called “Ganguro”, although that look is actually slightly different and often focuses around the use of bleached blonde hair and fake tan, where as Gyaru itself is more about a sort of “glam rock” style. It may involve jeans or short shorts, lots of makeup, possibly shiny clothes and glitter and such.

How about school uniforms ? Japanese school uniforms are considered so damn kawaii, that many girls choose to wear them not just out of school, but after they’ve finished school. This look is known as Kogyaru, although I don’t really know why it’s considered related to Gyaru because I don’t see the similarity. Kogyaru typically involves either real or stylised school uniforms, oversized loose socks, leather platform shoes with big shiny buckles or plain loafer style shoes, and of course cute, childish accessories like backpacks and purses and hair ribbons.

This is a cute look, but it’s possible you might get some odd looks if you’re a middle aged guy going out with a girl dressed in Kogyaru ! Also, Kogyrus are often looked down on because they are thought to be selfish, spoilt kids who often make money from enjo kosai, the art of compensated dating whereby girls will date much older guys in return for high fashion clothing or money. How often this includes prostitution is debatable, but I’d like to think that that aspect of it is just hyped up and that most girls into enjo kosai don’t sleep with the guys they date. I guess there is an obsession among older guys for that schoolgirl fetish. Perhaps they shouldn’t make Asian school uniforms so damn cute if they don’t want guys to be attracted to them ? Just sayin’. Kogyrus have featured in various Japanese movies, and in the western world they famously appear in Tarantino’s “Kill Bill” part 1.

Anyway, back on track. That’s most of the fashion styles I’m into, but there are others which I won’t cover. I will just touch on one Korean style though. Ulzzang is a style and also sometimes an activity. It’s similar to the Japanese style of Gyaru, but really focusses just on the facial look more than anything. It involves heavy, heavy amounts of eye make-up to make the girls look like they have huge eyes, circle contacts to make them look like they have big irises etc, and certain hairstyles and makeup styles as well.

Ulzzangs often spend a great deal of time preparing their look, often not even to go out. They just take photos of themselves for their myspace or facebook pages. The stereotypical Ulzzang photo is always an ultra-closeup from a bizarre angle, showing off their crazy big eyes. This look can freak people out a bit and some people are critical about it being “too fake” and the people who use it being try-hards. Look, the eyes are a very important part of a girl’s look, and Asians have such beautiful and varied eyes depending on where they come from so it’s natural they would try and enhance them. Personally I’m not a huge fan of excessive makeup, so the Ulzzang look isn’t really something I’m that into, but if done moderately I think it can be very pretty.

Before I finish, I’d just like to bring up a Korean word you might not know. You’re probably familiar with “Kawaii” right ? It literally means “cute” in Japanese, but more commonly means “omg that is SO DAMN CUTE I can’t believe it” when people say it, especially if they drag out the “w” and “i” sounds. Well, how about “Aegyo” ? Have you heard of that ? Aegyo is to act or play cute. Specifically it normally means to pull a cute face. It’s a Korean word, so it was really meant to describe a Korean look, but of course you could just as easily say that many Jpop stars pull Aegyo as well, they just don’t call it that. So if a Korean girl is pulling a cute face at you, be it pouty or coy or just sweet, tell her she has a nice Aegyo. And if you’re a girl, practice your Aegyo at home. You can even find tutorials for it on YouTube !

That’s by no mean a definitive explanation of East Asian fashion, but it explains a few popular types that I’m aware of, and hopefully I haven’t completely screwed them up and misrepresented them. If you want to see such cool fashion, well, you can go online I guess, but really, you need to get yourself to the Harajuku area in Tokyo, so named after the train station. “Harajuku style” is famous in Japan, and encompasses all the styles previously mentioned, especially Kogyaru and Lolita styles. Shibuya is also a popular area where this sort of crazy fashion runs rampant and is the home of Gyaru and Kogyaru, and there is one famous department store there called “109″ across from Shibuya train station that specialises in Gyaru and Kogyaru clothing, so you can expect to see LOTS of girls running around with eye makeup on and school uniform style clothing with loose socks. Sounds pretty cool, right ? Hopefully I’ll be there in a few months time and I can take pictures for you !

Life’s been pretty busy since I left Vietnam. I haven’t blogged much at all. Not because nothing interesting has happened, though to be honest, there hasn’t been lots to talk about, but just because I’ve been busy I guess. I’ve had to work and deal with life and stuff. But I would be remiss if I didn’t tell you a little bit more about the time I spent in Singapore and at least put some photos online. I wrote part of this story on my laptop on the flight home, so I’ll tell it how I told it at the time rather than update it from my current perspective.

I’m not a huge fan of Singapore. I feel like it’s a very artificial society. Everything’s been created. It doesn’t really feel like a place that has “history”. It’s just some place for rich people to hang out. You know Singapore has more millionaires per capita than anywhere else in the world ? They’re quite proud of that fact and they advertise it very prominently on signs around the city.

When I was talking to the Filipino guy who was kind enough to give me some money when I was little down on my luck due to having missed my flight, I commented that I was going to go into the city and try and find somewhere cheap to get some rice or something for dinner. He laughed and said “You haven’t been to Singapore before have you ? Singapore is the most westernised country in Asia. It’s not Vietnam. You’re not going to find roadside cafes with cheap meals of rice. It isn’t that sort of place. Everything here is expensive. You’ll only find classy foreign restaurants”.

I was quite disappointed by this. It sucked, but I resolved that since I was in Singapore for a few days (I deliberately made my ticket change for at least two days away so that I could have a look around) I would have a look. Since I had been told that my luggage had gone on to Australia, I only had the shirt on my back, so I needed some new clothes and I decided to go out looking for some.

I caught the train from Changi Airport to City Hall, thinking that it would no doubt be interesting to photograph. However, finding it turned out to be beyond my abilities, LOL. When you get off the train in the city centre, you’re in this gigantic shopping mall. I mean, it’s farking HUGE. It must have gone on for miles. I kept walking and walking thinking “This mall HAS to end eventually”, but didn’t. It went on for kilometres. I found it impossible to get out and I was getting quite alarmed and wondered how I was going to find my way back again. I found a sushi store that seemed cheap and I stopped in there and ate a couple of really tasty pieces of sushi.

Even after the sushi though, I was still hungry and if there’s one thing I noticed about Singapore, it’s that they have a SHITLOAD of Japanese restaurants. I mean, there was one corner of the mall where there were three Japanese restaurants right beside each other. Maybe it was supposed to be “Japanese corner” or something, I don’t know. I went to MOF first, but their drinks were so expensive, so I went to the all-you-can-eat-and-drink Sukiyaki place nearby instead, where I met Audrey. Oh, and yes, in case you’re wondering, I did email Audrey, and she emailed back. She was very sweet and asked if I was coming back to Singapore again. Jesus, I almost think she really liked me, LOL. I’m sure she was just being nice though, because she can’t have been much more than in her early twenties I don’t think.

Anyway, after lunch, I managed to escape from the gigantic mall. They had a formula one race on there the next day and I looked at the course and wished that I had the time and money to attend it, because that would have been really cool, but it wasn’t practical so I wistfully turned away. I stopped at a bus station to ask a local if they knew where I could buy some cheap clothes. I wish I remembered her name. I feel so embarrassed that I don’t remember because she was such a friendly person. She said “Sure, you should go to Chinatown. Jump on this bus with me and I’ll show you were to get off”. When we got on, she ran into a friend she knew and the two of them chatted to each other and me. They made a cute couple, though they weren’t an item.

They showed me where Chinatown was and I thanked them both and took a photo of them together and got off and wandered around. It was sort of late in the day at that time and most shops were closing up. I wandered around some cheap little malls, but most things were closed already. Outside though there were some shops still open, and I found a couple of places that had nice t-shirts and I bought a few with various emblems of Singapore on them since they weren’t too expensive. I also got a Tiger one, which I’m very proud of, since Tiger of course is my favourite beer in the world as I’m sure I’ve told you many times. I stared wistfully at some beautiful silk kimonos they had there, but I asked how much they were and they were too expensive for my taste, even though they were actually cheaper than the one I bought in Vung Tau.

After picking up my t-shirts I wandered around a bit and took a photo of a lovely couple walking along together, because the girl had a huge love heart on her shirt and they were holding hands. I guess people in Singapore are a bit lovey-dovey as well. Asia seems that way. They like to show off how in love they are. “Couple” clothes are common in many countries, where people get matching clothes or accessories to show that they are together. I wandered past a little restaurant that had very cheap food and I ordered lemon chicken and rice, which was only $3 SGD, and it turned out to be amazingly delicious too, so that was really lucky. I guess they do have cheap food in Chinatown at least.

I wandered into a few convenience stores to buy some snacks and see what they had. One store had what must have been thousands and thousands of blocks of Cadbury chocolate stacked up on the floor. That was sort of impressive. They must sell a lot of it I guess. It’s great seeing Australian products doing so successfully overseas like that. I bought some giant pocky and some other snacks and also wandered around looking at trinkets and stuff. I saw this little plastic thing with some cute cartoon characters on it with love hearts and stuff on it and it was only about $1.50 so I asked the clerk what it was and she said “It’s a fold up mirror” and I went “Oh ok, cool” and I bought it for Suki because it was really sweet and cute.

It was getting late and I figured I’d better head home. “Home” of course being a couch at Changi airport. I went to the train station near Chinatown rather than going back through that nightmarish mall. It was nearly deserted. I was fascinated by this one woman, standing near the train line, holding a laptop open on one hand and working on a spreadsheet with the other. I thought to myself “I guess this is a workaholic sort of nation”. Maybe that’s what you need to do to get by. I mean, I didn’t know her circumstances, but I thought it was sorta sad that she must have been at work all day and couldn’t even relax on her way home. The train arrived, and it must have been peak hour because god was it PACKED. I got on and we were squashed in like sardines, but it was a fascinating experience so I didn’t hate it.

When I got back to Changi airport, I went and relaxed and drank some rice wine and chatted online and processed my photos. I wasn’t real tired, and I sat up pretty much all night long using the internet. I would leave all my stuff at in the internet lounge area and pad over to the information desk in my socks every four hours for a new password. By that time, as soon as they saw me coming, they would start generating a new password for me. They didn’t even bother taking my passport anymore to write down the number. At around 4am a couple of American women and a man turned up to use their laptops. As usual I ended up doing tech support, because one of them couldn’t connect to their VPN. Apparently they all worked for Honeywell in the states. Was sorta weird chatting to them at 4am in the airport lounge, but interesting as well. I love hanging around international airports like that in the middle of the night. It’s just cool to meet strangers from far away and wonder where they’re from and what they do and then find out.

The next morning I wandered around the terminal I was due to leave from watching the time like a hawk. I couldn’t afford to miss my flight a second time ! I was pretty much down to my last few dollars. I went and browsed this little gift shop anyway. They had a few toys in support of Japan due to the earthquake and tsunami. One was a little Hello Kitty plush with “I (heart) Japan” even though Hello Kitty is made by a Hong Kong company. I had to give away all my Hello Kitty plushes that I’d bought for Suki because I didn’t have enough luggage to carry them home and I figured I could always buy more so I gave them to Thao, the girl I really liked in Vietnam. So without any Hello Kitty toys to give Suki I had only one choice. I went without dinner so that I could buy it for her. I can handle hunger and they’ll feed me on the plane later, but this little Hello Kitty plushie with a sentiment supporting Japan was too much to resist so I bought it.

I went through the boarding gates, and for some reason they picked on my cute Angry Birds bag. I had two small bottles of rice wine in the outside pockets and two bigger ones inside with my camera gear. But when they checked my stuff they said I had to throw one of the smaller bottles away. I asked why and the woman said “You can take the 100ml bottle on board, but not the 150ml bottle. It’s too big”. I said “But I have two 750ml bottles inside the bag” and she said “That’s ok. You can carry it on the inside of the zipper but not on the outside. Do you want to drink it now ?”

I stood there looking puzzled wondering why it mattered that some bottles were inside the zipper and some where outside and what difference that made. I assumed she meant that I had to drink it on the spot, and I mean, 40% rice wine is pretty harsh stuff so I shook my head. She turned around and threw the bottle into a large bin. It wasn’t until I walked into the departure area that I realised that I had probably 40 minutes before the plane left and I would have had plenty of time to drink it, but oh well. It was only midday and I’d slept all morning so I wasn’t really in the right frame of mind to start drinking, and it’d only cost me a few bucks so who cares I thought.

On the way onto the plane I grabbed a copy of the Straights Times, one of the local Singaporean newspapers and I read a bit of it on the plane since I had an empty seat beside me. And that’s how I found myself on my way back from Asia to that shit-hole of a country we call Australia. It’s ironic that so many Asians think the sun shines out of Australia’s ass and they would literally give their right arm to move there while I personally loathe the thought of returning. But that’s not what the rest of this story is about.

It’s about love. I know you all think I’m weird for marrying Merry the Cambodian girl at such short notice and I haven’t really explained how that turned out as I realise because lots of people have assumed that I was still with her so I’d better explain how that ended. The fact is, since I split with my wife, every single day that goes by feels like a day I am wasting that I could be spending with a new family, with new children of my own. I spent so many years scared shitless of being a father, worried that I wouldn’t be good enough or that I wouldn’t even feel anything for my child.

I was so surprised when she was born that my feelings were quite the opposite. Even not seeing her, Suki is on my mind every single day. The other day I was upset and I went out for coffee with my friend Toan. We talked about lots of things including Josh but also about Suki. I cried so much. In front of everyone. Toan kept saying “It’s ok. It doesn’t matter” but it was still embarrassing. Even just mentioning Suki brings tears to my eyes, so talking about losing her just destroys me.

Even though Jo has said she will never let me see Suki until she is legally old enough to decide for herself I am still buying her gifts all the time in the hope that things will change. And even if they don’t, as friends have told me, it will prove that I’ve really been thinking about her all these years. When I finally see her I am going to have whole packing cartons full of gifts I’ve bought for her. Obviously the clothes will no longer fit her but at least she will get the message – I didn’t abandon her. She was stolen from me against my will and every single day since I have thought about her.

When I was in Vietnam I saw this beautiful Hello Kitty nightie and even though I had little money at the time, I bought it. It’s a large size. I expect she will still be able to wear it when she’s 18 years old as long as she doesn’t become too big a girl. But it was so cute. That’s the thing. I am so desperate to have a family and children to care for and support that when Merry asked me to marry her I accepted even though she really wasn’t my type and I wasn’t that attracted to her. I just thought “Finally. A girl who is willing to marry me and have a family”. It was only when I realised that she had abandoned her own children and was an alcoholic that I told her to get the fuck out of my life. Being so desperate to see my own daughter I couldn’t possibly respect anyone who had the ability to see their own children but were too busy partying it up all the time and not seeing their kids.

It’s not like we didn’t work out. I found I quite liked Merry and we got along well most of the them. She was quite charming. It was only when she got drunk that we would argue lots, and I really didn’t want to go through that again after I’d been through it with Amanda, my girlfriend before Jo, because it had been very stressful and depressing to constantly be fighting and screaming at each other whenever she got drunk. But ultimately, it was Merry’s attitude towards her kids that forced me to end it. That was an absolute deal breaker when she got drunk that night and missed the bus because she was too uninterested in going to see her kids and then didn’t come home with me so that she could go out drinking until morning. But I didn’t let it bother me too much. I just fell straight into love with another girl hahaha.

It was my friend Thao that I drank with most nights. I met her through my friend Toan, and she turned up every night to drink with us even though she lived more than 40 minutes away by motorbike. She was a very immature for a girl of her age. Despite being 26, she still lived at home with her parents and was very sheltered. She worked at her parents’ cafe in the afternoons after studying hotel management at university in the mornings, and she was never allowed to stay away from home overnight anywhere where guys might be present because her parents were crazy overprotective.

When Corey was hanging out with us, it was very obvious that Thao was interested in him and he was flattered and thought she was pretty cool too. They went hiking in the forest on the Independence Day holiday. I would have loved to come along but Merry and I had other plans that day so I couldn’t. I asked him the next day how things were going between them and if he was considering sticking around for her. He seemed surprised and said “She’s not that interested” and I laughed and said “Are you fucking kidding me ? I’ve seen how she looks at you. She’s VERY interested”. He said “Not worth the trouble. Her parents are way too strict. It could never go anywhere. She’s too sheltered. I’m not sticking around here wasting my time for nothing”.

Oh well, I guess Corey wasn’t as into Thao as she was into him. Sure, dating her might have been a challenge and might not have gone anywhere fast, but I know I would have taken things slowly. Maybe Corey wasn’t interesting that sort of long-term, slow-moving relationship, but after Merry and I broke up and Corey left and went back home to the Philippines, my eyes never left Thao. Her cute smile and her laugh captivated me. She was so cute. So shy. She was smart and kind and thoughtful and honest and innocent. She was everything I wanted.

I “confessed” my love to her (as the Japanese say) and asked if I had a chance with her. At first she said “Maybe. You are a nice guy and funny. It’s possible”. But after a week or two I suggested that I would like to meet her parents because I wanted to go travelling with her and I wanted her parents to trust me so they would let her go. She asked why. I said “You know why. You know how I feel about you. Look. If you’re never going to be interested in me, just save me the heartbreak and tell me now. Don’t lead me on. I’m not in a hurry. I will wait as long as you want and get to know you as much as necessary but I need to know if we have a future”.

Sadly she said “No. Just friends. You can find a better girl than me”. I was heartbroken. Even when I was with Merry I looked at her with longing thinking “Why can’t I get a girl like that ? Why do the good girls always turn me down and the only ones who will date me are lying pieces of shit ?” The “You can find a better girl than me” line really pissed me off too. What a cop out. She wanted to soften the blow by pretending she wasn’t good enough for me. Sorry Thao but that’s not your decision to make. I decide who’s good enough for me, not you.

So here I find myself on an Emirates flight back to Brisbane having just watched a beautiful Chinese romance movie called “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart”. It’s about a girl who moves to Hong Kong with her boyfriend who then dumps her for another girl. A drunk saves her from being run over and she gives him all her ex-boyfriend’s possessions. He sells them and tells her to use the money to have fun with him. They go out and get her a makeover and have fun together. It turns out that he’s a famous architect but one day he just found he didn’t have it in him anymore and he turned to booze and became an alcoholic.

She told him to stop drinking and with the last $12 they had remaining she bought him some pencils and told him to start sketching a new building and she would meet him next week to see his work. In the meantime she met some sleazy asshole who charmed the hell out of her and even though she knew he was a total cheating sleaze she fell for him completely and forgot to meet the other guy who was honest and kind and not a lying cheater.

Three years pass before they run into each other again and the alcoholic has sobered up and is a successful architect again and has designed and built a huge building in Shenzou based on her silhouette from the night they met. They fall in love but she is still being wooed by the other guy and she is confused and unsure of herself. She knows she wants the good guy but she cannot help her attraction to the asshole guy who is now her boss. In the end they both ask her to marry them in a magnificent finale and well, let’s just say it has a very moving and happy ending.

All I can say is that it’s a shame real life isn’t like that. In real life girls always pick the asshole and the nice guy gets ignored. Even Thao, for all her qualities has the fault of being interested in these total fucking losers with nothing to offer her who aren’t even interested in her enough to stay in the country. I’m not referring to Corey of course, who was a great guy, even though he wasn’t willing to stay in Vietnam for her, but a certain other British loser we hung out with a little bit who Thao seemed charged by, but he wasn’t interested in her at all and he left shortly after I met him. Personally, I would have followed her to the end of the Earth but sadly it doesn’t matter now, because she said she wasn’t interested.

We did talk after I went home though, but we had a bit of a fight over Merry. Thao wouldn’t unfriend Merry on Facebook even though Toan had done so and insisted that Kelly do so as well. Toan had pretty strong morals and when he saw how Merry treated me he just said to Kelly “We don’t want to be friends with someone like that. You have to unfriend Merry”. Thao however wouldn’t do it, and I was reluctant to comment on her Facebook wall because I knew Merry would see it, and I suggested that I wanted her to unfriend Merry, but she got mad at me for telling her what to do and we had a fight and I unfriended her and everyone else I knew on Facebook, coz I just fucking hate the site and all the drama that goes along with it.

We did make up though. A couple of weeks later she messaged me on Skype to chat and said she was sorry that we’d fought about it. Ok so maybe she wasn’t in love with me, but she did appreciate me as a friend which was nice. I again hinted how I felt and said “What would you say if I said I was only coming back to Vietnam to see you ?” She was flattered, and I again asked if she would come travelling with me, because she always talked wistfully about how much she wanted to travel, but she said it just wasn’t possible because there was no way her parents would let her go anywhere with a guy. I let it go and said it was ok. I was just glad we were friends again and that she was being nice. She actually had a very bad motorbike accident just after I left Saigon and was quite badly injured and complained about being in a lot of pain and that she couldn’t ride. She’s better now, but I must say, I did worry about her since I wasn’t there and didn’t know the full extent of her injuries.

I’m not sure when I’m going back to Vietnam. We’ll see what happens. Right now my heart is in Korea and I am desperate to go there. I’m listening to Korean music right now. What’s wrong with me ? Why does my daughter have a Japanese name, I’m drinking Vietnamese rice wine. I listen to Korean music and watch Chinese love stories ? Why wasn’t I born Asian ? How did I end up like this and why ? There was no influence in my life pushing me in this direction. I knew noone else into Asian culture but here I am obsessed with it. Why ? I have no idea. The only reason I don’t think I’m totally crazy is that Josh fell in love with Asian culture in the same way I did thanks to that fateful Monday night back in 1995 when SBS aired Neon Genesis Evangelion on TV after South Park.

That night changed both of our lives forever. Some people get into anime, but that’s all. In fact, more than 95% of my friends who are into anime have absolute no interest whatsoever in Japanese music, or Asian dramas or anything like that. They just like anime and that’s it. But Josh and I weren’t like that. We hadn’t been exposed to it before, until we saw Evangelion and then we just went “Wow. Japan is cool isn’t it ?” and we immediately became obsessed with Asia. I used to laugh when I’d come home from university and Josh would be in his van in the backyard with Jpop blasting out the windows and I’d wonder if he even went to school or if he’d sat at home all day marathoning anime and listening to Jpop.

Ahhh Josh, if only you were still here, you could be by my side as I travel around Asia. I know that when I’ve lost my true love in the past before, I’ve been just as devastated as he was, and I tried to kill myself twice after Jo left me. Thankfully, and I won’t put this down to fate because that’s just bullshit, but due to random chance, I didn’t succeed. Josh wasn’t so lucky though. If only he’d managed to get through that period and given up on that dumb unfaithful bitch who broke his heart, he could be with me today, helping me plan our adventures trekking around Asia. I mean, I do love doing it on my own, but to be able to share all that with Josh when our love of Asian culture had brought us so close together would be so special. At least we could have supported each other when our relationships didn’t work out.

All I know is that my heart is stuck in South East Asia. It’s where I want to live and where I want to die. I want my children to be born and grow up in Asia. Not necessarily Vietnam. Maybe somewhere with more opportunities. Korea or Japan would be awesome but they’re both expensive. Harry the Filipino I met in Singapore tells me there are many opportunities for IT people in the Philippines right now. I don’t want to be another loser teacher with no skills like everyone else.

But on my next trip back, I have even more ambitious plans. Seriously ambitious plans. I don’t want to give too much away because it would take all the fun out of it if I couldn’t just jump on IRC or onto my blog and say “Hahaha, you will NEVER guess where I am right now !” and surprise everyone. But I will tell you the part of my plan which is specifically mapped out.

In January, I am heading to Malaysia. Only staying for a few days unfortunately, because I just picked dates that lined up with underbooked flights, but after that I’m flying to Thailand. After that I will go to Phnom Penh, but while it would cost bugger all, I haven’t booked flights. I’ll probably go via bus or train instead because I just don’t see the fun in flying from destination to destination and not seeing the country pass by underneath me. After that, well, of course I’m headed for Saigon to see Thao and Toan.

Originally I said I was going to take a teaching job temporarily there since Neil had promised to hook me up, but right now I just want to travel. I did have plans to go back to Vietnam and work and settle down, but right now, I have itchy feet and I want to really see Asia. I mean, I like to say that I’m travelling around Asia, but in truth I’ve only really been to Vietnam and Singapore, so I want to see the rest of the region. I can’t tell you my plans for beyond when I get back to Vietnam, because I don’t want to jinx them and I also know from experience that I am quite prone to meeting people and having fun in places and not wanting to leave, so I’d hate to tell you was going to do a bunch of things only to not do them, but I do have ambitious plans.

I’m going to buy a motorbike in Saigon and do some traveling “off the grid”. Since I thought I was going back to Vietnam to live, I did originally want to take a bunch of stuff with my like my guitar, and some computers and such, but now that my plan is just to wander from country to country overland and eventually go on the road on a motorbike, it’s obviously not practical for me to take all that stuff. I think I’ll have to settle for a laptop and tablet, my camera gear, and just enough clothes to get by for a week at a time.

I will give you this hint though… I have a very good friend from Amsterdam who has been studying Japanese and he asked me the other night “Do you want to go to Japan pawz ?”. At first I said “No, not right now. I’m busy in SE Asia. I’m putting that off till later”. But I haven’t seen him in person in well over ten years since he came to Australia to visit me, and when I realised how close to Japan I was planning to end up I said “You know what ? I think I should. It’s not like it has to be my only visit, and I’m already hoping to end up so close anyway… Let’s do it. Why not end my next journey in Japan and catch up with you ? At least I can get a taste for the place and be more prepared for when I’m finally ready to go back and live there properly”.

So… it’s not set in stone, but it’s a possibility. I don’t really want to make fixed plans and have limits on where I have to be and when. That’s why my plane journey ends in Thailand, because after that, I just want to wander as the mood takes me. If I meet some nice people in Cambodia or Saigon or Hanoi and decide to stick around and hang out, I don’t want to have to be constantly checking my calendar. Travelling to a schedule or having plans is not my thing. That’s not how travel works. Man, when I was in Saigon, I used to love being able to just go “You know what ? I don’t wanna go drink at Number Five tonight… I might jump on a hydrofoil to Vung Tau.. like.. right now” and just do something random. Or even go “Hey… Do you wanna go to Hue ? We can leave tonight”

Impulsive travel is the best kind. No plans. No dates. Just “I’d like to end up here at some point in the next few months. Let’s see if I can manage to make that happen”. So I dunno. Maybe some time next year I’ll be writing the words “Hey everyone. I’m sitting in a bar in Tokyo”. Who knows. Or maybe I’ll get to Saigon and Thao will say “You know what ? Fuck my parents, let’s take off to Vientiane for a week”. That’d fuck my plans in a big way, hahahhaha.

We can only hope, can’t we ?

So anyway, I took some photos of Singapore that I never posted, so I guess I should post them now shouldn’t I ? But let’s start with just one photo of Thao and then I’ll post photos from both Changi airport and Singapore City. Enjoy !

South East Asia has been rather devastated by flooding this month. The monsoon season has brought torrential rains and caused widespread flooding across Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam. Thailand and Cambodia have been the hardest hit, and many factories in Thailand in particular have been devastated. Since Thailand is the number 2 producer of hard drives in the world after China, this means that hard drives are going to become very scarce around Christmas time and prices will skyrocket until production can resume in the new year.

But putting aside such first world problems such as how much a new 4 TB hard drive is going to cost, the effect has been devastating on residents of those countries, with over 8 million people having been seriously affected but particularly serious is the effect on children. Vietnam hasn’t had the most deaths, with only around 70 deaths reported so far compared to more than 300 in Thailand and 250 in Cambodia, but I noticed a sad statistic when I looked at the numbers. More than 90% of all the flood deaths in Vietnam have been children. Other countries have also experienced this, Cambodia especially with over half their mortalities being children, but Vietnam is apparently leading SE Asia in percentage of child deaths due to flood waters.

I can’t think of anything insightful to say about this, so I’m just going to say… that sucks.

Did I show you the video of my friend Toan singing at my hotel a month or so ago ? I can’t remember if I did. Anyway, Toan and I were hanging out, and he was listening to instrumental versions of songs on YouTube and singing along to them. I filmed him singing one, and I later put it on YouTube. Someone commented that he was really good and should audition for Vietnamese Idol.

Well, he sorta did. He applied for Vietnam’s Got Talent. Not sure when the auditions are held but I sure hope I’m in Saigon at the time. I’ve love to be there to support him and cheer for him, coz he really does want to be a singer, and he’s really very good. He’s hoping to record an album soon. I sure hope he makes it onto TV. That would be so awesome to say that I have a friend who appeared on a Vietnamese talent show.

You wanna hear his song ? I know you do. Here it is. I actually find this song really addictive. Whenever I listen to it it gets stuck in my head for ages. Go Toan.. you totally deserve to be a Vietnamese pop idol !

Peter and I were hanging out. We had a good night together. We were just laughing at Merry. The police are after her after she skipped out on a taxi bill not to mention numerous hotel bills.

But I don’t want to talk long. Peter and I had finished drinking but he said “There’s two really pretty Japanese girls across the street. You can speak some Japanese right ? Let’s go talk to them. They’re drinking alone”.

At first I was reluctant and then I went “WTF ? I’m single and lonely… fuck being shy… I’m gonna go talk to these girls with Peter”. The ironic thing is they weren’t Japanese, they were Korean… which is mainly dumb because Peter IS Korean !!!! But he’s always lived in America so maybe he’s lost his touch. As soon as we approached them I said to him “Dude.. I don’t think that girl is Japanese”.

But I still went up and said “Kombanwa” and she cracked up laughing and said “We are Korean, not Japanese” and I turned to Peter and said “I fucking told you so idiot. You should recognise people from your own race for fuck’s sake !!!”.

Anyway they were good sports. We sat and talked to them for at least an hour. They were really nice girls. Peter liked the short-haired girl who’s name I forget because it was weird and I liked the long-haired girl called Sun and it seems she had lived in Japan for 3 years. When she asked “Why do you know Japanese ? Have you lived there too ?” I had to say “No. I just love the culture… My daughter has a Japanese name too” and I rolled up my sleeve.

Instantly Sun said “Oh Suki ! That’s such a cute name” and my jaw dropped. I was like “You can READ that !??!!” and she was just like “Well, not everything but I do know that word so yeah, I can read the word ‘Suki’”.

I resisted the urge to say “Marry me right now please ” and we just chatted a bit. They were leaving Saigon in the morning. They were only there overnight. Peter and I were both so sad. We were both into them lots. I mean, Sung wasn’t really my type as such.. but she was still very very pretty and at one point I admitted “I think Korean girls are the most beautiful girls in the whole world” and she took it as a personal compliment and said “Awww thank you so much”.

Anyway, fuck the stories. Here are photos of the two drop-dead gorgeous Korean girls that Peter and I went and chatted up tonight. I’m so glad I had Peter as my wingman because I would NEVER have done that alone but he dragged me along and it was great and we all had fun even though we just chatted and will never meet again.

OH OH OH OH !!!! BUT SUN GAVE ME A KOREAN COIN !!! YES !!! FOR REAL !!! YET ANOTHER FUCKING AWESOME FOREIGN COIN FOR MY COLLECTION !!!! And this one came from a beautiful Korean girl that I met for an hour in Pham Ngu Lao and even though it was just a brief chat, I think I will remember her for a long time. Nice girl. Here’s some photos.

Sorry I’m not IN the photos, but there was noone else around to take them. But take my word for it. I was sitting there right beside Sun the whole time :”)

I want to go out and have fun with Toan and Phuong Thao last night and forget about Merry. They were both busy at work or doing other things when I got into town so I just went to Bia Hoi on my own.

Now I know you may think this is crazy but I guess I believe that sometimes the best way to get over a girl is to find a new girl. And well Phuong Thao is everything I wished that Merry was. She’s cute, shy, polite, kind and she doesn’t get blind drunk and abusive like Merry did. So when I was chatting to her on Skype I came out and admitted the fact that I really liked her and told her all the things I liked about her but said I knew I wasn’t her type. She adored Corey, and Corey liked her. But not enough to stay in Vietnam to be with her. Personally, if a girl like Phuong Thao liked me… I’d follow her to the ends of the earth.

Anyway I asked if there was any chance of her going out with me once we got to know each other more. She said “Yeah it’s possible. You’re kind and funny and I like you”. I was pretty happy about that so I was looking forward to seeing her.

We weren’t supposed to go drinking. We were supposed to do something else. But I took my guitar and when I got to Bia Hoi to wait for Toan and Phuong Tao to finish what they were doing. There was two other guys there who played music too and they borrowed my guitar. Then a woman ran across the street and said to us “Are you guys musicians ? I’ve written this song about Saigon and I really want someone to put some music to it. Would you guys do that ?” And they said “Sure. We have a guitar back at our hotel. We’ll go and get it shortly and we can all jam and sing your song”.

I was so excited at the idea of having a roadside jam session with some singer who had an original song so I told Toan and Phuong Thao to meet us there. When they turned up, Phuong Thao had a cute little balloon hello kitty and well, I had just gotten my stuff back from Merry so I happened to have a new Hello Kitty plushie in my bag. I pulled it out and handed it to her. She was like “For me ? Really ?” and I just smiled shyly and nodded.

Later Nam came past and he had yellow roses tonight. I immediately bought one and gave it to Phuong Thao. I didn’t want to be seen to be coming on too strong, so I tried to excuse it by saying “You know I always buy roses from Nam. So tonight this one is for you”. She blushed and held onto it. But some other guy turned up that I guess they knew. He was British and his name was Oli and Phuong Thao hung on his every word and I immediately despised him. Not just because she seemed to really like him, but because he was just an arrogant, smarmy little cunt who seemed to think he was fucking awesome.

I got him good at one point. He said he’d lived in Saigon for a year and I said “Oh ? What do you do for a living ?” and he goes “Teach English”. I couldn’t help myself. I laughed and said “Oh, so you don’t actually have any real skills ? All you can do is speak English ? Oh well, I guess that’s enough to get by here”. He glared at me and said nothing. I just smirked.

I had decided that I had had enough of Gau. I was sick of his shit. So when I saw him that night and he said “Hello ? You buy from me ?” I said “Sure” and he handed me a 200,000 dong block of weed and I gave him 100,000 and said “That’ll do. We’ll call it even and you don’t have to worry about the other 20,000 you owe me”. He was like “What ? Fuck you ! No. I need the money ! You cannot do this !” I just said “Hey Gau, I’ve been really nice to you. I let you keep the change for weeks and even loaned you money when you said you had none. But I’m not a fucking retard. If you try and fuck me, I’ll fuck you back twice as hard”

He goes “Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you” and picks up a plastic chair like he’s going to hit me with it. In one quick motion I pulled my switchblade out of my pocket and flicked it open and said “You sure you want to do that Gau ?” His eyes went wide and he dropped the chair and ran off saying “I’m getting my sister”.

I guess his big sister is the one who got him the job or supplies his drugs. A little while later he comes back with some girl in her 20′s and Gau calls me over. I walk over with a bit of a smirk on my face and his sister says “Gau says you buy from him and not pay. This true ?” and I said “Gau has owed me money for weeks. He never gives me my change back and when he borrowed money off me he never returned it”.

She just swore at Gau and walked off in disgust. I laughed my ass off and Gau started yelling “FUCK YOU ! FUCK YOU ! FUCK YOU !” at the top of his voice and yelling to the Bia Hoi manager in Vietnamese, presumably saying “This guy rip me off. He not pay me”. She just ignored him and shooed him away. He came back many times that night and would walk past and just yell out “FUCK YOU” AND I would yell back “FUCK YOU TOO YOU LITTLE CUNT”. Actually we ran into each other dozens of times over the course of the night and had that same interaction, but he never came to close to me again after having seen that I have a knife in my pocket.

I chatted to Kelly, the Chinese girl who’s birthday at had been the other day. She said “I fucking hate Merry now. She attacked me last night” and I said “What ? You serious ?” She goes “Yeah” and rolled up her sleeve and showed me bruises. She said “Merry did this to me. She was drunk and started arguing with me and then she grabbed me and hit me. If I ever see that bitch again I’ll kill her”. I just said “Wow. That’s fucked up. You know I dunno if I should tell you, but she was only pretending to be your friend anyway. After your birthday party she said she didn’t like you anymore because of something you do. I told her it was none of her business what you do in your free time but she she said she hated you. Then the next day she was being all friendly to you. I hate people who do that. If you don’t like someone then you shouldn’t suck up and pretend to be their friend and then talk about them behind their back. I hate liars like that”. Kelly said “Yeah. She’s a fucking bitch. I fucking hate her so much now” and I just said “I understand”.

Anyway, Oli wanted to go to dinner and he asked Phuong Thao to come too. I wasn’t really hungry but there was no way I was letting him drag her off somewhere by herself so I said I would come too. So the four of us headed off to a little outdoor Vietnamese cafe. I wasn’t really sure what to order and I was thinking about getting some Pho Bo Kho (beef noodle soup) because I’ve become so fond of it that I eat it nearly every day. But Toan said “Man. Have you tried pig brain soup ? It’s really good”. I was like “Really ? You’re not fucking with me ? It’s really good ?” He said “Yeah man it is. It’s very tasty. You want to try it ?” and I said “Yeah. Why not. I’m not a wuss. I’ll try anything”:

Well you know what ? Pig’s brain soup really IS quite delicious ! I’m glad I tried it. I know most people would go “Fuck that. I’m not eating brains” but I tried it and it was good. I asked Oli if he’d tried anything exotic and he said “Not much no. I just eat regular food mostly. I’ve never had brains but I have had some exotic stuff”. I said “My favourite restaurant in District 8 sells bull’s penis. Would you try that ?” and he goes “No fucking way” and even Toan said “Yeah no thanks. I don’t want to put a bull’s dick in my mouth” and I jokingly said “Yeah I bet you’d put a man’s dick in your mouth right” and he laughed and goes “Fuck you David. You can’t even ride a motorbike” and I was like “Ouch. That hurts. At least I can learn. You’ll never try bull’s penis will you ?” and he goes “Nope”.

We went back to Bia Hoi and I tried to pick up my guitar again but there’d been a big police raid in the street earlier that night because apparently the shitty traffic cops were pissed off and they wanted some quick cash so they came screaming into Pham Ngu Lao in a few cars and started writing tickets for everyone sitting in the street. It’s ludicrous that bars can blast out this deafening music literally all night long and the street is full of the noise of motorbikes and car horns, but playing an acoustic guitar on the street is forbidden ? What the fuck ? But I wasn’t playing at the time so I didn’t get in any trouble. I think maybe they don’t like the Bia Hoi place across the road because they only seem to harass them and they never hassle people at our place.

Some people got really mad at the police because none of the tourists know that it’s against the law to drink on the road because everyone does it and the owners of the places all encourage you to do it because the police very rarely ever come into PNL. It was a big scene and everyone was watching in interest to see if anyone was going to get arrested because one western woman was screaming and swearing angrily at the police, and in Australia that would have gotten her into big trouble.

But this isn’t Australia, it’s Vietnam and tonight the police had no desire to arrest anyone. They were just writing tickets so they could get some easy cash. I asked one guy “Do you reckon any of the money from those tickets will go to the government ?” and he laughed and said “Not a single dong. Those tickets will be thrown away. They’re only doing it so that people will bribe them” and I chuckled and said “Yeah I think so too”.

I got lots of photos of it too and they didn’t care. In Australia if you photograph the police doing their job and arresting someone, they have the right to arrest you and confiscate your camera. There’s a law that says that if a police officer feels that by taking a photograph of them performing their duty and you might use it in any way to intimidate or harass them then they have the right to arrest you, charge you, and confiscate your camera. But not in Vietnam thankfully ! So I switched lenses and got lots of photos from afar and right up close. I practically stood right in their face as they were issuing tickets. I had my press card around my neck and I was just dying for one of them to harass me so that I could wave my press card in front of them and say “Really ? You want to arrest a foreign journalist ? Wonder how that’ll look in the news”.

I guess I’m just a bit bitter about everything that’s happened lately and I’m just looking for a fight. I wouldn’t have stabbed Gau of course, but if he’d hit me with that chair, by god I would have beaten his scrawy gay little ass into the pavement. I’m sorta just waiting for someone to really try and fuck with me so that I have an excuse to fuck someone up big time. I’m a nice guy, but I’m not someone you want to cross because I will fuck you up bad and lately with all the bad shit that’s happened to me I’m just dying for someone to give me a reason to seriously fuck them up.

As soon as we sat down of course Oli was right beside Phuong Thao. But I talked to Toan about it and he said “Olly doesn’t really like Phuong Thao as much as she likes him. MAybe he wants to sleep with her but he doesn’t really care about her”.

FUCK !! Why is the world like that and why are girls always like that ? You can be the nicest guy on earth, but the girls will always fall for the asshole who’s going to treat them like shit. I fell in love with Phuong Thao the moment I met her, but I never really had a chance to talk to her at first and then later I was with Merry so I couldn’t get close to her. And now I can see she’s only attracted to these young, skinny twenty-something dickheads who aren’t funny and interesting. I guess she just has poor taste. Oh well.

Anyway I just couldn’t sit there watching it. I was getting so annoyed by the way Phuong Thao was smiling at this smarmy little prick in a way she never smiles at me and I practically wanted to cry. You think I’m nuts right ? I only just broke up with Merry and I’m talking about how in love with Phuong Thao I am. But that’s just how it was. The first time I saw her I thought she was so pretty and sweet and shy and I just wanted to get to know her, not fuck her.

So I said to Toan “I’m going. We’re not allowed to play guitar here anymore and I can’t stand watching Phuong Thao smiling at that dickhead like that” and Toan said “Ok. Take care. I know you’re upset so be careful ok ?” I said “Don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine”.

I walked past the Rhum House and it was deserted. I know why. They charge two to three times the price for a drink that anyone else does. I can get a Tiger for 11,000 dong elsewhere but they charge 35,000. And on top of that, Cyrille made a big deal of inviting Merry and I there the other night promising us free drinks, but we got no free drinks at all and then the waitress tried to charge us full price instead of happy hour price even though she knew damn well we knew it was happy hour because she came and told us when we arrived. I complained and insisted she fix it and Cyrille said “Oh she’s new here. She doesn’t know” and I said “Bullshit. She came out and TOLD us it was happy hour when we got here”. I insisted she fix it and she changed it to 150,000 dong instead of 210,000 and I paid but then said to Cyrille “Man, she still charged me 150,000. That’s still not right man. We had 7 beers and we got charged for 10″ and he goes “Jin fixed it up already” and I said “No he didn’t. She still overcharged me by 30,000 dong” and he turned to her and angrily said “Fine. Give him his 30,000 and no more”.

Needless to say we won’t be going back there. Fuck man, I was there on their opening night. Over the three days around my birthday I spent millions of dong there, and I even gave him a framed photo of all his staff from his opening night and this is how he treats me ? I know he’s hard up for money but that’s no way to treat a friend and a good customer so I won’t be visiting his place again. I wrote TJ (the other owner) a long email about why he wouldn’t see me there again.

I’ve been considering coming home. Not to see my parents and obviously I can’t see Suki. But one of my clients really wants me to come back. He says he needs me to do stuff and he’d rather talk to me in person. He’s even willing to fly me back. That’s pretty tempting but I don’t want to leave Saigon right now and I’ve just been offered and amazing opportunity.

Because Merry has worked as a tourist information clerk before I went to my favourite travel agent in Do Quang Dao street where I’ve stayed in their hotel before and gotten travel prices from them in the past. I talked to the owner Sang and asked if he had any positions for a girl who spoke many languages and he said “Mate. I know you. You’re a smart guy. You’re not one of these idiot tourists around here. I think i can offer you something much much better”.

I said “Really ? What’s that ?” and he said “I want to open a third office around the corner. Same as this one. Travel agent downstairs and hotel upstairs. But I need a Vietnamese person to be the official owner because foreigners aren’t allowed to own a business or house here and it has to be in a Vietnamese person’s name. I would like your wife to be the signatory on the place, work there managing it and working there and have you as the “Western face” of the business and do all the marketing and promotion and that sort of stuff”.

I was like “Are you serious ? You are offering to let us both manage your travel agency and hotel for you ?” and he said “Yeah mate. I know you. I trust you. You’re not stupid. I know you could handle it, and high season is about to start and man… we make fucking shitloads in high season. That’s why I need a third office. There are hundreds of travel agents in Pham Ngu Lao and the more offices I have the more money I make. I tell you man, you’ll make a killing. You’ll have no worries sending your wife’s kids to school here with a job like that. You know how much it costs to send a kid to school in Saigon right ?” And I said “Yeah, I’ve been told… it’s hundreds of dollars a month per child. I couldn’t believe it could possibly be that expensive” and he said “Yeah in the provinces it’s subsidised by the government, but in Saigon sending kids to school is so bloody expensive mate. This job would be just what you need to support your new wife and kids”.

I was pretty dumbstruck that this guy was just offering me a hotel and travel agent to run. I mean obviously he would really own it and take the lion’s share of the profit, but he assures me that I could make enough money to be pretty comfortable. Sadly Merry didn’t really give a shit. When I took her to meet Sang she was disinterested and not very enthusiastic. When I split with her I was like “Fuck. Now I can’t take that job” and I’ve been thinking of whether there’s anyone else I can trust to run it with me.

I told Sang what happened with Merry and he tried not to laugh and just said “Yeah you get that man. Vietnamese girls, Cambodian girls. They’re fucking trouble mate. They’re so tricky and sneaky and some of them are really terrible people. Lucky you got out when you did I think”. But I said “I know another girl, a friend of mine. She’s honest, smart, trustworthy, not an alcoholic and I think maybe she would be willing to do it” and he said “Sure ok. Well the offer’s still there. You find a reliable girl to do this and the place is yours”.

So I asked Phuong Thao of course. At first she was like “Thanks but I just got a new job. Not really looking for another one. Besides, my English is not very good”. I said “Rubbish, your English is excellent. I’ve never had trouble understanding you. You work in a cafe right ? This is an opportunity to be the manager of a hotel. That’s a good job, right ? Your parents would be pretty happy about that wouldn’t they ?”

At that moment the power went out in her district and we couldn’t Skype anymore but I guess what I said sunk in because she texted me and said “Hey, tomorrow can you tell me more about this job ? I think maybe you’re right and it sounds very good” so i told her I would talk to her about it and take her to meet Sang and see what he thought of her and vice versa.

I mean, I am a tiny bit suspicious about why someone would offer me such a fantastic opportunity. Normally when something sounds too good to be true it’s because it is. But I’m going to look into it further. Sang is a really good guy and we’ve talked a lot. I ran into him on his way home last night on his motorbike and he said “Oh I saw your ex-wife drinking in the bar across the road with some guy earlier” and I said “Yep, sounds pretty likely to me. She’ll talk to anyone if she thinks they’ll buy her booze” and he goes “Sorry man. That sucks. But you know, I could find you a good girl to marry. You tell me what age you’re after and what sort of personality you want and I can find you a good, reliable, honest girl if you want”.

I said “I’m not in too much of a hurry to get married you know ? I really just want to meet a girl, not rush into some marriage that might not work out” and he said “Yeah I understand. Don’t hurry. But don’t let a good opportunity go by either. You’re a smart, handsome guy but maybe a bit too trusting. You need to wise up and stop trusting every girl who tells you she loves you. But marriage isn’t always forever in Vietnam. It’s not like your country. If it doesn’t work out. You just leave. You don’t have to support her or give her all your shit. I mean you know in Vietnam a divorce is done in five minutes. There’s no bullshit waiting period. You just walk in, see a judge and he goes ‘Ok you’re divorced’. It’s not a big deal like in your country”.

Hmmm. That’s sort of interesting to hear that. I heard the same thing from Les. His Vietnamese wife was being a bitch to him and he said he wanted a divorce. They went to court and he said “Irreconcilable differences” and the judge said “Can you work it out ?” And he said “I”ve already moved out” and the judge said “Ok. Done then. You’re divorced”.

I know that sorta sounds a little sad, but when you think about it, isn’t it better than the bullshit you have to go through in Australia ? I mean I’m still not divorced. Jo and I had to separate for a whole year, divide up all our shit. I have to give her half of my entire life’s superannuation funds. And even then, the judge rejected it because he didn’t like the bullshit that Jo wrote on the paperwork. Why make people go through all that shit ? If two people are unhappy and don’t want to be together… just let them go. Why must it be some huge legal drama ?

I tried to break up with Merry on good terms. After she came to my house I talked to her at length about why I couldn’t be with someone who would abandon their their children so they could run off around the world getting shitfaced every night and never see their kids. I told her she needed to grow up and stop wasting her life. I told her that I wanted a stable family and that she obviously didn’t want that. She just wanted to party all night and that’s not what I want to do for the rest of my life. I think she’s very depressed about how her life turned out and she’s just running from place to place taking advantage of people and drinking herself stupid. It’s horribly self-destructive and I really feel sorry for her and she said “Yes, I’m going to ring my mum and ask her to get me a ticket home to see my family today”.

I said “What are you going to do now ? You don’t even have money to get back to your hotel” and she said “I’ll walk”. I said “Ok, wait. I’ll have a shower. I’ll take you into town”. I took her into the city but we didn’t speak a word and she gave me Suki’s stuff back and I said “Do you want to go get something to eat together ?” and she nodded. I just didn’t want things to end on bad terms. Just because we didn’t work out didn’t mean we had to hate each other. I was hoping we could end it amicably and it wouldn’t end up like Jo and I with her hating me. So we went to lunch and talked a little and afterwards I gave her a long hug and we both had tears in our eyes and I said “I hope I see you again Merry. I want to be friends. I’m sorry it didn’t work out but we just want different things in life”.

Sadly this was bullshit because last night I was out commiserating my own problems and getting drunk and at 4am I saw her on Bui Vien talking to some backpackers, obviously trying to encourage them to take her somewhere to drink more. As I walked past I chuckled and she was obviously drunk and she yelled out “Fuck you” to me. I thought that was pretty rude considering how nice I’d been to her, paying her hotel bills, supporting her, buying gifts for her kids and doing my best to end things amicably.

So I yelled back “Hey. Watch that girl. She has no money and she’s just going to try and scam free drinks out of you”. They said “Yeah and who the fuck are you ?” and I said “Her husband. I was married to her until I realised she was a thieving alcoholic who runs out on paying all her bills. She can’t even pay for the hotel she’s staying at”. Well, that fucking pissed Merry off. She started screaming “FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU” and ran over and punched me in the face, knocking my glasses off my face.

Not having my glasses and being a bit drunk I stumbled around looking for them (still carrying a guitar and a heavy bag) and I fell over twice making a huge mess of my knees which started bleeding. She stood there with these guys laughing her arse off. I eventually found my glasses and put them on but they were totally bent out of shape and the lens was scratched. Awesome. Brand new pair of glasses ruined. Now I need to go buy a new pair, which I can’t do because I spent all my money on Merry and her bullshit trip back to Da Lat that we never even took.

But the night wasn’t all bad. If I can rewind a bit, I’ll tell you some of the good things that happened that night. After I left Bia Hoi I decided to go to the park to play guitar and get drunk. I bought a bottle of Hanoi vodka and headed off down Pham Ngu Lao street but I only got a short way when a Vietnamese guy outside a travel agent said “Hey man. You wanna come play guitar with us ? Have some drinks ?” I wasn’t really sure I wanted any company at that stage but I said “Sure, why not ?”

I went in and it was a bunch of Cambodian guys who’d just arrived and they were all sitting around drinking and eating. Someone thrust a Saigon Red in my face and said “You like this beer ?” and I said “Saigon Do ? Hell yes !” and they all cracked up laughing and repeated “Saigon Doooooooo !” because I guess they didn’t expect me to speak any Vietnamese coz I probably looked like a tourist.

So I sat around and played with them for ages and drank some beer at first and then got stuck into my vodka. They didn’t really want to hear my rock songs. They wanted to hear traditional Cambodian ballads and one tried roughly to play one but he didn’t really know how to play so he just strummed an open chord over and over while singing. They wanted me to try and make up music to go with the melody but I’m not really good at that. Eventually I played “Free as a Bird”, Amber’s song and they thought that was really pretty and I said “Sing something” and they said “We don’t know what” so I said “Just harmonise. You know. Humm” and I gave an example.

They went “Ohhh ok” so I played the song and they just harmonised. It was fucking beautiful. 5 Cambodians, 1 Vietnamese and 1 Australian sitting around playing and harmonising to this beautiful ballad. It was really special. If I’d had someone else there to film it, I would have because it was absolute gold. Eventually it was getting late and I think they had a hotel or something to go to and they started packing up to leave so I got my stuff and bid them all goodbye and headed off.

I went into the park as planned and some people say that the park is very dangerous at night. Apparently a lot of junkies go there to shoot up and stuff but I dunno, I really have no fear these days especially since I started carrying a switchblade so I just wandered into the park looking for somewhere to sit down near the lake and play my guitar and drink vodka.

As soon as I walked in some guy said “Hey man, how’s it going ? You’re out late” and I said “Yeah. Had a bad night. Just wanna get drunk and play guitar”. He said “You wanna talk about it ?” and I said “Sure ok” and we sat down. He offered me a cigarette and I said “Sorry I don’t smoke those. I only smoke marijuana. You mind if I do ?” and he goes “No of course not man. Break it out. Let’s spark up”.

So I handed him my block of weed and some papers and said “You roll. I’ll play” and he started rolling some really nice joints and we must have smoked about four or five over the several hours we sat there talking. I mean, I’d been drinking beer until about 10 at Bia Hoi and then I’d drunk some more beers on the street and then I finished an entire bottle of vodka by myself so frankly I don’t really remember what we talked about. But it was good. I of course opened up and told him about my miserable life recently. I told him about Jo and Suki and I told him about Merry.

He was just like “Fuck man. Women are such cunts. I really understand you man. My wife ran out on me too and I haven’t seen my kid in years either”. Fuck ! Why is this such a common story ? In nearly every country in the world when you split up with a woman the government says “Ok now you’re required to give her half of everything you have to support her and you have to pay money for the child” and in some countries you even have to give the woman part of your income even if you don’t have children. But time and time again I hear people saying “Yeah the bitch ran off with my kids and I haven’t seen them in years. I miss my kids so much but I don’t even know where they are because the fucking cunt won’t tell me”. Cyrille, Toan (this guy), me, and no doubt millions of others have the same sad story.

Someone asked me earlier that night “Why don’t you just go to court. You have rights as a father. Your name is on the birth certificate right ?” and I said “Yeah but it’s not that simple. I saw a lawyer and he said that if I spent 50 grand and went to court that I would win and the judge would grant me access rights but that if Jo wants to be a cunt all she has to do is come up with some reason why I can’t see Suki every time. She just has to say ‘Oh Suki’s sick right now. She can’t go with you’ or ‘Sorry we have something else on’ or ‘No I don’t have transport to drop her off’ and she can keep doing that forever and the courts can’t force her. They can ORDER her. But they can’t FORCE her and this happens time and time again where a court orders a woman to let the man see the child but the woman just avoids it over and over and in practice the man still never gets to see the child”.

I asked the lawyer “So it’s hopeless ?” and he said “It all comes down to her. If she’s going to be a bitch and doesn’t want you to see your daughter, then you will be fighting in court until your daughter is grown up already and you’d better have deep pockets. If you have LOTS of money and you can afford a really good lawyer to represent you and put pressure on the judge then sure… maybe you can get what you want. But I have the feeling you struggled to raise the $440 just to see me for an hour so you aren’t likely to have hundreds of thousands to fight her in court, right ? I’m sorry to say it, but in this situation where the woman is being a bitch, most people just give up because they realise there’s nothing they can do”.

Toan sympathised and I continued drinking and we smoked some more. Another guy was walking through the park and saw us. I’d stopped playing while we talked and he said “Hey man. Sing us a song” and I said “I can’t sing and play at the same time. I’m not coordinated enough sorry” and he said “Awww come on. Give it a go” and I said “Ok fine. I’ll do a simple blues thing” because of course if I play a blues song I can alternate between singing. So that’s what I did. I just made up some crazy lyrics on the spot and after each line I would strum the guitar.

I have no idea what I talked about. Mostly Saigon and Vietnam and booze and girls and stuff I think. All I remember is I had these guys in hysterics for most of it. I must have ripped out some good lyrics because they loved it. But eventually the sun was starting to come up and they all wanted to leave and my vodka was finished so I walked home, which is where I ran into Merry and had that incident.

After that I was so fucking pissed off and depressed I just wanted to get totally fucked up. I found a motorbike guy selling opium and said “Yeah give me some of that. A big bag. 400,000′s worth” and he did. Unfortunately when we took off the other motorbike guy said “You realise he just ripped you off ? That’s not opium. That guy is a scammer. I’m pertty sure he just sold you chewing gum. Check it”. I pulled out the bag and opened it and sniffed it and sure enough… it was fucking chewing gum. I said “Go back. I wanna find that guy. I’ll fucking kill him if he doesn’t give me my money back”. The guy did a really quick U-turn but I was holding so much stuff I couldn’t hold on properly and I slipped off the back. I wasn’t hurt. At least not as badly as I was when Merry hit me and I fell onto the ground twice. But when we went back the guy wasn’t there.

Suddenly I realised something terrible. My laptop wasn’t in my camera bag anymore. It must have fallen out when I fell off the bike. We went back to the area where I’d fallen off and looked but it was gone.

FUCK !!!!!!!!!!!!!

So last night I got punched in the face by ex-wife, had my glasses broken and cracked, got ripped off by some asshole drug dealer, AND lost my fucking laptop.

Great night. Not feeling so happy now I can tell you.

So here’s some photos, starting with a photo of the pig’s brains I ate last night and also a photo of Phuong Thao. I think you can tell why I like her :”)

So I told you I’m not doing this daily “everything in the life of pawz” shit right ? Well I’m not. I will still write, but it’s going to be on a new, private site that only a few chosen friends will have access to. Personally this pains because I love my writing being public. I love how people from as many as 100 countries read my writing, but one or two people always manage to fuck it up by using things I say against me by taking them out of context or making ridiculous inferences so fuck you. You don’t get to read it.

But this is still my personal blog and for the few people I care about I will still tell you certain things about what I’m doing so that you know what happens in my life because I know someone of you genuinely care. And there’s some things I need to get out in the open for everyone to see. I know some of you think this should be private but I think making this shit private just brushes it under the rug. I want it to be right out in the open so everyone knows how I feel and what I’m going through.

Yesterday Merry and I sat on the roof taking photos and drinking rice wine and talking about how much we miss our children. She has two, a girl named Mai who’s 10 and a boy named Nimh who’s 6. While Merry’s father lives in Cambodia, her mother and Merry’s children live in Da Lat in Vietnam. She hasn’t seen her children in 4 years due to some complicated circumstances and she’s just as sad about it as I am about not seeing Suki. But she can at least go back and visit even though there is much tension within her family and her visiting causes a lot of fighting.

We’ve talked about bringing Nimh to come and live with us. We cannot bring Mai at the moment because a good school for her in Saigon is incredibly expensive and far beyond our means right now so she will have to stay in Da Lat until I get a better job. But Nimh is sick right now. Merry doesn’t know the details because her mother and her aren’t on very good terms but we talked to her family a bit yesterday and I talked to Mai both yesterday and today. She sounds so adorable and she speaks such clearly enunciated English which surprises Merry because her own mother cannot speak English at all and when I talked to her mum I had to speak to her in Vietnamese which basically meant that all I could say was hello and introduce myself and tell her she had a beautiful daughter. But speaking to Mai was pretty cool.

Merry wants to go see Nimh. We’re not sure why he’s sick but it’s not a just a cold and she hasn’t seen him for years and she wants me to meet her family and I want to meet them too, so by Monday I should have been paid a little money from a client of mine and as soon as I have the money we’re catching a bus up to Da Lat to see her family so that I can meet her mother and Nimh and Mai.

I’m going to take a job teaching. It’s not something I really wanted to do because the pay is low and the hours are shithouse but if I want to support Merry and her kids then that’s just what I have to do. It’s only part time anyway so I can still pursue other jobs. So when my rent is due next week we’re going to give my landlord the required one month’s notice and we’re going to move out. We’re going to rent a small furnished apartment at the resort in District 11 near the airport that Neil runs. Something small, but hopefully with a kitchen and if possible a balcony and an extra bed so that Nimh can come and live with us.

Suki is as good as dead to me now that Jo is running away interstate with her and won’t talk to my family despite everything they’ve done for her and all the money we’ve given her. For the last four months I’ve spent every day thinking about her and buying her clothes and gifts all the time thinking “I’m going to see you soon Suki… soon and these are all going to be for you”. But that’s not going to happen. Joanna made that very clear. In one breath she said “The child support you send me isn’t enough. I want you to send me $1000 now instead of running around spending money in Saigon”.

And in the next breath she said “No. I’m not sending you any photos and you cannot visit or see Suki”. She said she would never let me see Suki until she was legally old enough to make the decision herself and Jo couldn’t stop her. What a lovely person. She insists I send her money but then says I can’t get so much as a fucking photograph of my daughter let alone see her in person. I hope she fucking dies in a horrific road accident.

Well, I look forward to the day when Suki is legally able to decide for herself to see me and I live in anticipation of whenever that finally happens but I think in the meantime, I have to accept that Suki is not and will not be a part of my life as long as Jo is alive and I should just concentrate on the family that I can have. And now I have two kids who I haven’t yet met. Mai and Nimh. And next week I’m going to meet my new mother-in-law and my two new step-children and hopefully Nimh’s sickness is nothing serious and when we get back to Saigon and move house to District 11, he can come and move in with us and I will finally have a family to care for again like I have wanted for so many years.

All I have wanted, ever since Jo and I started trying to have a child back in 2004 was to have a family to love and care for, but unfortunately Jo just used me, led me on, made me support her and give her a child so that she could run off with my child to live with someone else and never even give me a photo of my child let alone see her. I’m not even going to talk about how immoral or illegal that is because everyone knows. Noone I tell it to can even comprehend how someone could do something so disgustingly abhorrent and cruel.

Since Jo won’t even give me her address so that I can send Suki her gifts I guess I just can’t give them to her. As someone suggested to me recently, I will just continue buying her gifts and then one day when she’s 18 years old and comes to see me I can give her 18 years worth of gifts that I’ve bought and say “Here’s everything I bought for you to show you how much I love you but that your mother wouldn’t let me give you”.

But in the meantime, I guess I’m going to be buying cute clothes for Nimh and Mai instead. I can’t wait to meet them. Maybe if you’re lucky, I might even share some photos with you if I’m not sick of all the bullshit and grief that you people reading this shit give me. I finally have some good work coming up worth real money and I’m going to take a part time job teaching as well so that I can support my family so that I don’t have to rely on my own parents who neither understand me nor give a flying fuck about the situation with my daughter and spend all their time kissing my ex-wife’s ass so that they can see my daughter even when I can’t.

So maybe I’ll post a little from time to time, just so you know I’m not dead. But my true thoughts and feelings ? Fuck you, they’re private now. And my stories ? Well, they’re being written somewhere else now. And if you’re invited to read them, then lucky you. And if you’re not, suck shit.

Now, there’s a 3 Litre bottle of $2.30 rice wine sitting here waiting to be poured into my tiny china goblets that we drink it from. It’s miserable and raining today and I can’t afford to go out anywhere because the tiny amount of money I had in the bank just got gobbled up by bank fees and recurring bills so we’re going to be eating packet noodles and drinking cheap wine all weekend until I get paid next or until my parents get off their arse and help me sell the rest of my shit that I have back home instead of pretending to sell it and claiming it all as theirs instead.

Oh and to my mum and dad, if you think you’re doing some sort of weird fucked up favour by not selling my shit and keeping it and then borrowing money on credit to give to me and then bitching about how you owe all this money on your credit card, you’re not. All you’re doing is disrespecting me by condescendingly thinking that I’m so fucking stupid that I couldn’t possibly know what I’m doing with my life and that I’m going to come running home tomorrow and say “Bawww I want my TV and stereo back”. Well I’m fucking not. In fact, I’m so fucking insulted that you treat me like I’m 13 fucking years old that frankly I don’t want to come back now.

Just do what I fucking asked you to do and stop lying to me. Photograph all my shit so that I can sell it. I gave your phone number to Brad today who wants to come and buy my stereo. He has already messaged you and you haven’t even responded to him. Don’t fuck him around. Just sell it to him and have him put it straight into my Bendigo account OVER THE COUNTER on Friday please and no I won’t be using it to buy your retardedly expensive $750 ticket home. If I wanted to get home I could get there for half that price but you think you’re so fucking smart and I’m so fucking stupid that I couldn’t possibly organise a cheap plane ticket home. Well now I don’t want to after the way you’ve been treating me like a fucking child and lying to me.

You’re not helping me see Suki because you’re too fucking busy kissing Jo’s ass and going off at me for saying bad things about her while she fucking runs around saying “Fuck you. I won’t tell you my address and I won’t send you photos and you’re never going to see Suki” and you don’t give a fuck and don’t do anything about it. You only care about seeing Suki yourself. You’ve seen her time and time again and you don’t even fucking TELL me about it let alone send me photos.

You fucking get what I’m saying ? I don’t want your fucking money I want you to be honest and to fucking help me do simple things like see Suki but you act totally two-faced. You kiss Jo’s ass and then you lie to me and you don’t even tell me when you see my daughter or give me the photos that I’ve asked you to send me. I’ve asked you time and fucking time again to get a CD of all Suki’s photos from Jo and send it to me, or at least send me high-resolution copies of the photos that you’ve taken yourself and you’ve NEVER FUCKING DONE IT. You just fucking ignore me, lie to me, act condescending and insulting and try and tell me what to do. Fuck you. If that’s your idea of “helping” then I don’t want it. Just sell off my fucking shit and I’ll be out of your life and you won’t see me again.

At least I have some people who understand. Cyrille, the owner of the Rhum House just got back from France and he’s very eager to see me. He said “Please, I want to meet your new wife, come see me at the bar tonight. All the drinks are on me. I will pay for everything” and I said “I can’t. I have no money. My clients always pay me so late and I have so little work. I cannot even get there” and he responded “I understand. I spent all my money opening this bar and now I can barely eat. I am lucky to have a wife who supports me and loves me and she works to feed us while my bar is not making much money”.

I said “That is good. I am glad you understand me. But I am so angry right now because my ex-wife is running away, kidnapping my child and taking her somewhere else and will not tell me where she lives or ever let me see her again”. And he said “You know ? I understand that too. I had a wife in Thailand and we broke up and she will not let me see my 6 year old daughter for the last 4 years. She ran away with her and I don’t know where she is or how to contact her. Just like you with your daughter’s tattoo, I carry my daughter’s photo with my everywhere because I am so crazy about her even though I haven’t seen her in 4 years and don’t even know what she looks like now so we are just the same. Tomorrow when you come I will show you her photo and we can talk. I understand so well what you are going through”.

Well, thank fuck someone does. My wife is this heartless cold bitch who won’t even let her daughter see her own father, send him photos or let him send her gifts. My parents are too concerned with seeing their granddaughter themselves to give a fuck whether I get to see her or not. Noone else understands. Cyrille understands because he has had his daughter stolen from him too, and Merry at least understands why I am sad because she hasn’t seen her children either but at least she can visit them if she wants to. Hell, even Lil lives apart from her children but still gets to see them. But Cyrille and I are the only ones in the situation where we loved some woman and gave her everything only for her to turn around and say “Fuck you. I’m going away now and you will never see your child again”.

Unless you’ve had that happen to you, then FUCK YOU and don’t even you TRY and tell me you understand what I’m going through because you fucking don’t and you NEVER FUCKING WILL and I don’t even want to talk to ANY of you about it.

Anyway this 3 litre bottle of rice wine isn’t going to drink itself so it’s time to drink, so … Khang Li. In fact…..

Mot Hai Ba YOOOO !

I feel quite relieved about my decision to stay here permanently and not return home. Unfortunately I must accept that I’m not going to get to see Suki and I don’t want to see anyone else. I may look into having my cats flown here though.

That’s all I have to say.

Watch some video if you want. Or don’t. I don’t care.

I don’t think I’ve talked about this. Maybe I have. I can’t remember. It’s hard to distinguish between the stories I tell in my head and the ones that actually make it online. But I’m enjoying telling these tiny random short stories. Not every story has to be a 12,000 word epic tale. So here’s a simple one.

Have you ever had a girl (or guy, if you’re a girl, or whatever sex appeals to if you if you’re that way inclined) feed you ? By which I mean she cuts up something on her or your plate and holds it out to you on a fork (or chopsticks) for you to eat ?

It’s so cute and it’s really friendly and caring. It’s not like it’s incredibly intimate, here at least. It’s just… I struggle to find the right word. It’s just somehow sweet. It’s amusing and it’s a teensy bit embarrassing and a teensy bit exciting all at the same time. It makes you feel shy but also open and cared about at the same time. It doesn’t always mean a lot, but sharing a meal is sort of significant.

Some people hate sharing meals. They hate when they take someone to dinner and they want to share meals with them. I dunno why. I guess I can understand. You choose what you choose and it doesn’t mean you want what the other person has. But of course there’s no harm in them saying “Hey, this is really good. You should try some”, and then they cut a piece for you and add salt or pepper and hold it out for you to eat on the end of their fork and you open your mouth and they feed it to you.

To watch two people do this is really sweet and in a western society you tend to see it and think “Awwww. That’s really sweet. They must be deeply in love” because you don’t see it all that often. But I think it’s done much more commonly in Asia. Asian people don’t seem to have this absurd fear that by sharing a fork or a glass that you’re going to catch herpes off them and it’s not uncommon for someone you barely know to be willing to share their drink with you or share their food with you or even cut up their food and offer it to you on their fork for you eat.

I guess it’s more meaningful to me because we don’t really do that back home. Back in Australia, two people sipping out of the same bottle is serious freak-out stuff. It’s like “OMG that’s an indirect kiss” and it’s only done between people who desperately like each other. Here… not so much. Sure it’s sweet and friendly and not without meaning, but it doesn’t mean that just because you share your drink or your fork with someone that you want to sleep with them, which is pretty much what it means in many western countries, Australia at least.

I’ve had it happen a few times to be honest. In fact, I’ve had it happen so many times I’m not even sure I can count all of them, hahahahaha ! I know this probably sounds weird but yeah, I’ve had a few girls feed me from their fork. It’s really cute. When it happens you half blush and suddenly become aware of your surroundings and wonder who’s looking, but of course there’s no choice but to accept, so you lean forward and take the offered morsel from their fork and then you munch it up and say “Mmmmm. That’s very good” and then you chuckle and she grins happily at you.

I dunno. It’s just one of those things you do I guess. But it’s a cute experience. I’m not sure that I ever had that happen with my wife in 8 years together. Maybe once early on in our relationship. In western cultures it’s something you do when you’re in love to show how much you want the other person. Here, it’s simpler. It’s just sharing food and being friendly. It doesn’t come laden with quite the same amount of significance and connotations. It certainly doesn’t (necessarily) mean the girl wants to sleep with you, so if you’re in Korea or Vietnam or Japan or wherever and a girl holds out some food on a fork for you, don’t freak out and read too much into it. She’s just being friendly.

But enjoy it all the same. It’s a sweet gesture and I personally love it.

How much fun can you have in a Korean park with a water gun ? Quite a lot apparently, as Simon and Martina proved in their latest video. I’m not going to explain it. Just watch it.

And how cute is that weird bear suit she is wearing at the end ? I tell you what, Simon and Martina. When I get to Korea next year, hopefully in January on my way back to Vietnam, we had better meet up. I want to meet you guys and go out for dinner and maybe do something crazy like have a water gun fight in the park. You guys rock. Keep doing what you’re doing

Charlie Daniel’s band. “Still in Saigon”.

My favourite line is “13 years in 15 days”. Well. That’s how it feels here. Every day is like a week. I’ve been here for four months but it feels like four years.

“The ground at home was covered in snow. And I was covered in sweat”

I certainly know what that’s about. It’s freezing back home in Australia, and here I’m drowning in sweat every day.

Still in Saigon. Not going anywhere. That’s all I’m sayin’.

Well, I didn’t know until I stumbled across her. This is Cuca.

She’s an 8 year old girl from Japan who has a cult following because she performs her favourite Jpop and Kpop songs on YouTube. She just practices the moves and sets up her video camera and then videos herself dancing to the song in her house, and uploads it to YouTube. She’s not even old enough to work out how to crop the annoying black bars out of her 4:3 aspect videos that play as 16:9 hehe.

But she does have a cult following. She’s been reported in newspapers and online many times. People know her. She has over 10,000 subscribers to her channel. Damn. I wish I had 10,000 subscribers to ANYTHING I did. She’s famous in her own right and it’s clear why. It won’t be long before Cuca is rocking the stage with one of the big groups. If not a Hello! Project group or one of the AKB48 stable, she’ll be with a new group. She’s going to be a star.

Here’s her channel. Check it out. She has 159 videos and over 4 million views. She covers KARA, °C-ute, S/mileage, Berryz Koubou, Morning Musume and many more. What a hero.

I was gonna show you her doing Run Devil Run because I’m very fond of that song, but to be honest the dance is pretty mediocre. The only reason I was gonna show is because of the bizarre dress she wears in the clip. Oh hell, I’ll show you.

What is she wearing in that clip ? What is that ? Gothic Barbie wear for an 8 year old. Who buys her that stuff ? Her parents I guess. Weird. But I mean, she’s in Japan. There’s probably tonnes of places that sell that stuff. I mean we’re talking about the country that pioneered the “gothic lolita look”.

But it’s not that weird. At least not as weird as this.

Does she really go outside in that ? LOL. Poor child. I bet her parents do that to her. Or maybe that’s fashionable in Japan. It probably is.

I saw something funny on the Berryz Kobo International Fan website. There was a making of session from one of Berryz Kobo’s video sessions and they had photos. At the end they said “Unfortunately we don’t have any video of the girls doing this, so instead, here’s a clip of Cuca performing the song !

Ok, just ONE more clip of Cuca, because if you like her by this stage you’ll have gone to her channel.

Yes that’s Cuca’s mum and little brother. And is it just or is Cuca’s mum HOT as ? Wow. I’m not gonna say that four letter M word that sounds a bit like “milk”, but damn. She is a mum I wouldn’t mind getting to know. Cuca, why doesn’t your mum’s name get mentioned.

Oh wait, she’s probably married, right ? Damn. We can dream I suppose, can’t we ? How do I teach my daughter to dance like Cuca and get millions of followers online and earn lots of money… err, I mean entertain lots of fans ?

A bunch of girls from Morning Musume were asked:

What is the country you want to visit most?

This is how Michishige answered:

That’s my girl Michishige. I bet you’d look really cute too. Dare I even say “ichiban kawaii” ?

God I’m lucky Jo’s unlikely to be into Jpop anymore, otherwise we’d end up posting on the same Morning Musume fan forums and sitting on the same IRC channel. Hahaha, wouldn’t that be awkward ?

Our internet is FUCKED tonight.

I mean it’s been fucked for about a week, because there was ANOTHER cut in the AAG (Asia-America-Gateway) cable this week and our internet slowed to a trickle for everything headed to the USA. But that was supposed to be repaired a few days ago, and I’m pretty sure it was, because everything was hunky dory. And then this evening at around 6pm, it just turned to treacle. I mean it was a disaster. Web pages wouldn’t load. DNS (I use Google’s in the USA) didn’t work. It was awful.

And something even happened to Viettel’s 3G network too. I was using them earlier, and they dropped out suddenly and when they returned, they were 2G EDGE only. No UMTS anymore. And now, I can’t even get a signal. My 3G stick just sits there going “Nope. There’s noone out there to talk to”.

My apartment’s ADSL is still working, but you can forget about loading YouTube or downloading anything from the US. You’ll be lucky if you can load a web page. Fortunately my IRC is sort of spared because I actually tunnel my IRC through a proxy back in Australia, and Vietnam has a separate link to Australia which is working fine.

But yeah, AAG is apparently dead as a doornail. We do have the EAC (East Asia Crossing) cable, but either that one isn’t used for regular broadband providers or maybe we don’t get to use that one at all anymore. Possibly we all switched to AAG when it was commissioned. Coz I mean, who needs redundancy ?

So currently we’re routing everything via Hong Kong, which I presume means we are using the T-V-H cable (Thailand, Vietnam, Hong Kong), and we route to Hong Kong where we jump on the APC (Asia Pacific Cable) to get to Japan, and from Japan we’re hopping onto what I’m guessing is probably the TPC (Trans Pacific Cable) where we route from Japan to the USA.

It’s not that our ping times are awful, it’s just performance is miserable. Those cables were not meant to carry this much extra traffic and they’ve just slowed to an unbearable speed.

I totally blame China. I bet it was them. C’mon, they’re always fucking with Vietnam’s shit and mucking around in the South China Sea like they own it. They sink our boats (allegedly), they fish in our waters (allegedly) and now they’re cutting our under-sea cables (allegedly). Leave us alone China. Just coz your internet sucks doesn’t mean you have to go and fuck up ours.

PS. I’m just joking about China. I don’t really mean all that stuff. I have at least three good friends in China. Please don’t send Chinese assassins to kill me. I was only joking I swear !

PPS. Also, isn’t it weird that I know more about the undersea cable network in Asia than I do about Oceania’s ?