i was sitting in my hotel room in udon thani flipping through the channels when i stumbled across our old SF friend, Tim Tayag (yeah, the same from my Hong Kong pictures), on the tube hosting a filipino travel show.

it's good to see he lost his trademark fu man chu and gold front tooth. his face, though, hasn't changed a bit... what a pity.

in many ways, he's like j.lo. he used to have a little, but now he has marginally more than before. plus he's got her swollen buttockal dimensions, much like a baboon in estrus.

Posted by thejerk at 08:21 PM | Permalink

during a time of particularly heavy suffering at the hands of syphillitic gonorhea, i extended an invitation to all the friends i have in the world to join me traveling. when both of them disrespectfully declined my offer, i decided to ask the california ass-clown contingent to join me in Bangkok for a 2 week stint. this is the roster i've acquired, for better or for worse:

5'10" (5'4" immediately after a haircut) left-handed (often known to masturbate right-handed in order to get the unfamiliar sensation of "a stranger") genuine, friendly, sympathetic, hairless back and inner thigh, hygiene above reproach - these are words and phrases not once ever uttered about "Bassam" the arabic anachronism. turn-ons: long walks on the beach, fluffy kittens, full frontal nudity, suicide car bombings, pederasts turn-offs: fully clothed women, any noun turned into a verb (e.g. "lunching" or "summering"), kicks in the testicles

5'3", 323 pounds the last time he'd measured himself at a truck stop weigh-in. his bodily measurements are coincidentally the precise match to a perfect sphere possessing a 2'7" radius. known to boil a 10 minute egg in under 2 1/2 minutes, his greatest accomplishment to date is a wedding ceremony he performed in which he wed his pet rock to his 10 year old collection of used tissues. someone that's proven without a doubt that a man can be virile and masculine while possessing ambiguous genitalia.

5'6", hovers between 150-231 pounds depending on the inflamation of his genital goiter. he has the audacity to shamelessly pass that monstrosity off as one of his testicles. like we believe god's blessed you with one unspeakably large testicle and left the other one as shriveled as a baby raisin.

sure his english isn't perfect, nor his afghani but i'll be the first to admit, when you need advice on a sphincter problem, he's the "go to" guy. his impressive resume of diseases is not limited to his "ring of fire" but engulfs his entire halfling body depending on the bangladeshi monsoon and ebb of its coastal high tide. as a hunter and gatherer, he uses the skills he's acquired from the jungles of his suburban backyard (in milpitas, california), to provide dietary supplements of garden ants and rotten fallen sour apples. but be not alarmed of his lepresy for his gathering chores are performed with his prehensile butt cheeks while his well stocked medicine cabinet surely holds a remedy for whatever ailment you've acquired from him still, at the age of 30, resides with his parents

only after these 3 depart thailand will the local tourism statistics show my hypothesized increased consumption of bangkok prostitution and as a result an impact on the sales of antibiotics and anti-inflamatory salves. conversely, the californian sales of zoloft and glue-sniffing induced crimes will surely suffer. by how much, only time will tell.

what have i done... may lord vishnu have mercy on our souls.

Posted by thejerk at 12:35 AM | Permalink

typical cost of day in Laos

$0.50 - cup o' joe
$1.50 - fried laos noodles lunch
$1.00 - banana pancake mid-afternoon snack (traditional overhyped backpacker fare)
$2.00 - overeat indian food w/ the works for dinner - "it tastes so good, once it hits the lips"
$0.50 - hour's worth of skinternet to satiate my craving for news and pornography
$3.00 - night's accomadations (single room w/ bathroom; ro rats - they cost extra)
total - $8.50 for entire day

daily activities (e.g. veng vieng - a backpacker enclave)

09:00 - wake up and do morning calisthenics (ok, at least the waking up part is true)
10:00 - really wake up and get out of bed
10:30 - grab a cup of coffee (iced coffee if it's hot, hot coffee if it's chilly)
11:00 - wander around, killing time until it's time to stuff my face
12:00 - eat health lunch where all 4 food groups well represented (food groups: 1-chicken 2-pork 3-beef 4-diet coke)
01:00 - back to bed or watch 4 straight hours of Friends reruns on DVD played at one of 8 restaurants ad infinitum
03:00 - snack time... milk and cookies
06:00 - eat nose clearing portions of spicy Indian food; the kind that burns on the way in, and on the way out
08:00 - watch hollywood movies playing at many local falang restaurants and/or write a few emails.
09:00 - eat leftover indian food... severe heartburn attacks about now as well
11:00 - retire to room or drink cheap local brew until bouncers eject me from watering hole
12:00 - eat remaining leftover indian food
12:30 - poo fire
01:00 - wretch myself to sleep

life is hard, my friends... life is hard

Posted by thejerk at 12:31 AM | Permalink

hear ye, hear ye.

swine, vermin and countrymen, lend me your cauliflowered ears and gucci wallets. my time in vietnam is chronicled in digital photographic form and ready for consumption by the salivating dogs that you are. highlights include:

- nothing because vietnam is not my kinda place.
- conical hats
- vietnam war memorials (they call it the "american war")
- "dong" jokes til the cows come home - which turned out to be february 28, 2005.
- buffy the vampires layer

try not to go too hog-wild:

click here for pictures

Posted by thejerk at 11:29 PM | Permalink

it's illegal, so i hear, in laos for local women to date (or have relations) with foreigners. as a result, i've come across no laotians in the skin trade business. there ends my comparison of southeast asian economies via the prices of prostitution. this economic comparison can likewise be made by comparing the prices of value meals but Cambodia, Vietnam nor Laos have our close friend, Ronald Mcdonald residing within their borders. i'll pick up my experiment in Myanmar (it'll always be Burma to me) and Indonesia by soliciting prostitution (then walking away of course) for the sake of economic research.

Posted by thejerk at 11:28 PM | Permalink

ok, don't judge this place by its name. muang ngoi sounds as bad as mangalore, india but i assure you, this is one of the top 10 places i've been in the world. village idyll with readily available opium products and diet coke lured me to stay and live the simple life for nearly a week.

electricity is available only between 7pm and 10pm after which the entire village goes dark and is illuminated by the stars and an occasional full moon. laotian food is acceptable to my delicate palate but in addition, my guesthouse owner cooked up a mean tuna fish "samdwich" w/ "french fried". when warm out, the locals bathe naturally in the river adjacent to the village:

i attempted to bathe with them but was relegated to a corner of the river away from suspicious women and farm animals who thought i was there only to perv (hey, i wanted also to clean myself... and peep). may god help the villages downstream from where i released my stored toxins and putrid waste products into the water.

turns out women bathe in full sarong and the only ones without it are butt naked children and the occasional old lady whose sagging breasts challenge any heterosexual man to remain so. i tried the sarong bit but it didn't take. i also tried to hire a local for exfoliation purposes but that didn't take either.

if only they could work on getting rid of the rat problem - but i suppose the french are allowed to vacation in the village as well.

back to the daily grind of traveling from city to city. soon i'm back in bangkok where some jerks from california are flying out to join me in 2 weeks of suffocating heat and projectile ping pong balls.

Posted by thejerk at 11:26 PM | Permalink

among the many minorities in vietnam, i had the pleasure of spending a few days in the black thai village in mai chau. i'm not getting all racial and stuff. that's what they're called. there's also a white thai minority but they're better and stay out of jail with a greater frequency.

Posted by thejerk at 01:49 AM | Permalink

vietnamese public buses operate on a variable pricing scheme based on your nationality. they charge anywhere from the correct price to triple the price that locals pay. naturally, i didn't have enough vietnamese dong to get me to the border so i, yet again, starved for a full day and improvised my way with a mix of hitchhiking, public bus and private motorcycle transport. at one stage, i exchanged a ride for service, unloading pigs shipped to various towns in rural highland areas. as a result, my jeans were caked with excrement (the pig's) and urine (my own) which i had to endure for the remainder of my journey (i still haven't washed them because of the lack of washing machines in laos).

i overpaid most of my trip and nearly lost my cool at a town where the local motocycle drivers collude to extort triple the normal price of transportation for the final leg of my journey. after flexing a bit of my muscle (gluteus muscle), i managed to arrive at the border with a splitting headache, empty stomach and a few choice words about vietnamese public transportation. if you're ever planning a trip to vietnam, i have one bit of advice: go to tijuana instead and relax with a dos equis at one of the many fine donkey shows in the downtown area.

Posted by thejerk at 01:45 AM | Permalink