Chinese Tequila

Thailand is my favorite place in the world (other than New York, of course) for three reasons: the food, the women, and the Buddhism; all three are done there better than anywhere else I am aware of (if you do know where these three things are done better, please fill me in; thanks). Of all the things I love about Thailand—from the oddness to the strange dichotomies and juxtapositions to the weather to the feeling of spontaneity that is omni-present—tequila is not one those things; it’s not even in the top 1000.

Normally in Thailand, I stick to Singha beer, a lager much in the vein of Heineken or Stella. Sometimes I opt for Sangsum—a ‘Thai whiskey’ that is actually a rum, that may or may not have some kind of serious and intense hard drug in it; if you drink too much of this ‘whiskey,’ you’re liable to have some kind of moment of clarity. I was once found speaking in tongues in a meditative sitting position on the floor of the apartment I was staying at, post-speaking with street dogs in the neighborhood, all after imbibing a pint of this devilish drink. #realtalk

But when the moment is right, tequila is the only option, regardless of your surroundings… but now I have gotten ahead of myself, allow me to explain how this moment came about....

After a lovely Chinese New Year in a Chinese-style river town (see previous entry Chinese New Year, Thai style) my travel partner and I set out further South to Phuket where we had a friend teaching at a university to crash with. As we entered Phuket, I couldn’t help but feel like a marine on R&R; the wild and untamed power-lines were tangled to levels that only decade’s worth of haphazard and non-cooperative infrastructure development could create; the architecture was low-effort Portuguese style; the skies were super clear and the air was super humid; and there were bars on the main drag and in downtown that aimed to entice men hungry for the visceral pleasures of life. All in all, these characteristics compounded to formulate a feeling that I was in Full Metal Jacket 2.

Over the hill and through the jungle from Phuket, the dingy but lovely beach paradise on a peninsula, was Patong—the 2^nd or 3^rd ‘sexiest’ place in Thailand (and of course, by ‘sexy’ I mean wrought with prostitution and steroided up dudes looking to mount anything they can). In addition to these two demographics, there were lots of Chinese families on vacation for the New Year.

Whenever I am surrounded by neon silhouettes of women and people pushing sex shows on the street, I wonder what decision process leads Chinese families to come to places such as Pataya and Patong, but I suppose that’s neither here nor there.

My travel partner and I had prepped for the night with some Northern Thai food, beers, Sangsum (it was one of those nights), Redbull©, and lighthearted existential joking about how we wound up in the places we had wound up in (see previous Thailand posts).

We strolled up and down the main drag of Patong, perusing the schedules for various sex shows and other adult entertainment (Man and Woman, Flower Shows, Ping Pong Shows… mostly standard stuff). We considered getting suits tailored for 80 bucks then decided against it. We stopped into a 7-11 and had another Redbull© and beer.

After stepping out of the 7-11, we were approached by 4 young Chinese women. They asked us to take a picture of them; it was relieving to be approached by non-salespeople. Being that both me and my travel partner speak pretty darn good Chinese, we wowed them and our crew and their crew became a singular crew.

As we walked down the main drag, women in tow, a tequila bar magically appeared out of nowhere. Normally I know to avoid tequila bars in Asia, but it was one of those nights, and the Chinese women had never had a tequila shot, so we had to school them.

There was a discount if you bought the shots by the 15-platter, so being the frugal folks we were, we took advantage of the discount.

As we explained the salted hand and the lime chaser, the tension was building; I had never realized how odd the process of a tequila shot was—the Chinese lasses’ fear was palpable. The process was explained, everyone had a salted hand, the limes were being gripped, the shot glasses were hoisted up… we then held them down (Chinese style cheersing) and called out ‘gan-bei, xin nian kuai le!’ (cheers! Happy New Year!)… the alcohol entered our systems… annnnndddddd…..

Turns out it wasn’t tequila; it was more like something between vodka and rubbing alcohol. Shit. There were no immediate adverse reactions so I remained calm; my travel partner, who had been living in rough and rugged Beijing for a few years at that point, was not standing for the counterfeiting we had become victims to. In a fit of rage he demanded to speak to a bar tender or a manager or someone that he could heir his grievances to. In a commanding Chinese style, he told them that their product was counterfeit and he wanted a refund. They said no. He demanded it once again. They said no. They offered more shots for free. We took it. Haggling 101, yo.

We left after 2 trays of shots to take on Patong once again, which had seemed to become smaller and more beautiful while we were in the tequila bar. We went with the only logical next step at this point: a ladyboy bar. We entered and ordered another bulk discount shot tray—this time it was Sambuca (real Sambuca! Yay!).

After a few songs and taking in the whole scene, I looked into the eyes of one of the Chinese women; it struck me like a ton of comedic bricks: they didn’t know they were in a ladyboy bar. I asked her which woman was prettiest, she responded with a finger and a ‘that one.’ I then asked her: ‘you do know that these women are all actually men, right?’ She denied it, I told her to look at the legs of the dancer in front of us, the rippling calves, the defined hamstrings. Her jaw dropped, her eyes scanned the room, a new sense of her surroundings was taking hold. 

After some chit-chatting with the Chinese ladies about their views on transgenderedness (it’s just a phase! They are confused!) and some informal interviews with some of the ladyboys to learn about the life of a transgendered sex professional, we set out for the beach.

The beach was pretty empty at this point in the late night. We enjoyed some more 7-11-bought beers and jokes with the Chinese women. Somehow, this turned into an unrequited match of truth or dare which ended with myself and my travel partner naked, with this group of fully-clothed women cheering us on and yelling out objectifying slurs. Luckily, as an experienced Boy Toy, I am not a masculinist and I don’t mind being on the receiving end of a bit of objectification from time to time.

After an awkward denial of entry from these young ladies’ hotel, my travel partner and I were forced to walk long distances in search of transportation—in soaking wet pants (literally). An early morning walk in a place like Patong is a great illustration of the dichotomy that is omni-present in Thailand and something I truly love: you can see street level prostitutes picking up their last customers or walking home for the night, right next to the monks who do there alms in the early morning, plus drunken foreigners looking silly and out of place in a land equal parts interesting and confusing to them (although we could only see the latter-most when looking at reflections in store front windows).       

'Something' in Goa

I decided at the last minute to go to Goa, despite the condemnations of the place from my pretty devout Muslim hotel owner in Mumbai ('all they do is drink,' 'there is nothing there but trance music and drugs,' etc. [after a month here, that’s not completely inaccurate]). While waiting for my bus outside a water bottling plant in North Mumbai, I met two guys about my age who were going on the same bus as me. They were pretty clearly gay, but if you know me you know I don’t care about sexual orientation at all (I like to select my friends based on things like coolness); we hit it off and ended up rearranging our seats so we could sit near each other on the bus. It was a long and bumpy overnight sleeper bus but I managed to get 5 or 6 hours of light sleep. Over the course of the bus ride we decided to split a room for economic purposes, and come to find out a friend of theirs had already reserved a room for us. I always love avoiding walking in street clothes with my pack in a tropical environment searching for a hotel, but I don’t love it quite enough to actually plan or make reservations (it’s worked out for me so far!).

When we arrived in Goa, I instantly got the feeling that I was in some kind of quasi-Latin American parallel universe. There was a big catholic cathedral situated right next to a bright orange Hindu temple blaring chants over the loud speaker, and the language in Goa is a mix of Portuguese and local Indian languages, so I could understand about 12% of the words from my knowledge of Spanish (a considerable improvement over the 0% of Hindi I could understand in Mumbai!). Once again the slacks and mustaches made me feel like Ron Burgundy was lurking around the corner; or perhaps people were earnestly discussing the battle between disco and rock over a Tab© soda.

We ended up, despite our explicit questioning, on the wrong bus to the beach. This was actually nice though, because it afforded us time to have a morning tall-boy can of beer while we waited for the correct bus. We weren't quite finished with the second man-can when the correct bus finally came, but I had the distinct feeling from what I had seen around me that no one would say anything if I imbibed my beverage on the bus… I was absolutely correct.

To get to the room we were staying in, we had to walk through a back alley about 3 feet wide, dodge clothes lines of numerous households, and walk through a few back yards, all of which included rubble, burnt trash piles, and cows. Our place was actually really nice, and the landlord was a big, sarcastic, dark skinned Indian man with a huge mustache and an outfit that almost always included wearing boxers in the stead of pants and a silver cross on the outside of his shirt or tucked away in his impressive chest hair when topless. I ended up staying there almost a week, and I guess he appreciated my sense of humor as much as I did his because he gave me a pretty hefty discount when it came time to pay him, without me even asking.

We went down to the beach and wound up at a beach bar that I would later become a regular performer at; we drank numerous big bottles of Kingfisher© Strong beer and jammed out to some light-day-happy-psy-trance, or something like that. 

I love music, but I find it very hard to connect with trance, a problem that very few others in Goa seem to have. I have been, nonetheless, trying to make sense of it, though; I always ask a trance fan what kind of trance I am listening to. It seems there is a gradient of light to dark, which refers to the texture as well as what time of day that it’s good for, and then there is psychedelic, which I believe means something different than the word describing such psychedelic classics as 'Innagadadavida' or 'White Rabbit', because I could hear no connection whatsoever. The beats per minute are also important, and it seems the later at night a song is played, the faster the tempo is (just for fun, try listening to a dark trance bass line at 220 BPM; if you are like me, it will likely bring you massive amounts of distress). 

After a month of daily exposure, I can say that to get the full experience of trance, it might be necessary to take MDMA or LSD, two things I have no desire to do (I like my current consciousness a lot, so I ain’t fixing what ain’t broken, as they say). This brings me to another thing I don’t like about trance; it’s really hard to talk to women when they are twisted on drugs of such a caliber, which takes away about 60% of why I like to go to dancing establishments in the first place. But I digress, and we wouldn't want that to happen on a blog... so back to the day at hand!

After about 11 hours of beer drinking and an hour of dancing to inhumanly fast music, we took the next logical step: go back to the guesthouse and drink liquor. It was there that my friends finally came clean to me about their orientation… sometimes I feel like it’s a shame that we live in a world where it takes inebriation for someone to peek out of the closet, but that is neither here nor there, I suppose. Now that that was out of the way, life was just that much more comfortable.

While walking on the little roads next to the beach and through the backyards filled with livestock and the smell of burnt plastic, I started to feel something. The hippies here didn’t piss me off that much; they seemed pretty legit. The international array of women attracted me; options, options, options. The law enforcement seemed lax to non-existent; a friend would later tell me he loves living in Goa because you can ‘bend the rules.’ It wasn’t the absence of cops, or abundance of girls, or the presence of homemade clothes, though, that was making me feel this ‘something.’ I still can’t tell you exactly what this ‘something’ in Goa is, but I can tell you that my weekend trip to Goa has turned into a month, and I am still feeling it every day when I wake up, and it makes me smile both to myself and those around me, and I have been laughing on a notably regular basis (and no, the abundance of hash is not to blame either, although it may play just the slightest of roles).    

Catching Crabs in Colombia

Tayrona Park is a spiritual center of the pre-Incan natives of the North Colombian coast and the site of the world’s highest coastal mountain range. Just a decade or two ago this area was a big no-no for tourists; cocaine trafficking paramilitary groups used to control the area. These guys didn’t see gringos as humans, per say; they saw them more as a case of shiny new assault rifles thanks to mommy and daddy’s love and savings account. Tayrona is currently managed by a big hospitality corporation which has done well to build extravagant and exorbitantly priced beach front lodges, and the Colombian government has apparently done well to clean out the area of guerillas. Now this beautiful area is receiving a full-on gringo invasion, but the further in you go, the less fluffy white robes and mai tais are present, and the more once in a lifetime wilderness experiences materialize.

When hiking in hot weather, one should cool down
anyway possible.

After taking a cab with a Lil Wayne aficionado who’s forever banned to enter the US due to an illegal stay of over a decade in New York (see previous entry), we arrived at Tayrona. There were old Colombian men with horses attempting to push 10 minute rides on folks who had just arrived, with prices plummeting as we showed less interest (20 thousand... ok 14 thousand... ok 3 thousand!). The first ‘ecolodge’ (read luxury hotel in the jungle) we passed had big dumpsters outside; instead of raccoon, Cayman were digging through the trash, it was like a homeless Jurassic Park—my dreams were already coming true. We made our way down to the beaches and arrived at the ‘camping area’ in the mid afternoon. This ‘camping area’ turned out to be a field with a volleyball net, a restaurant, a covered area, and about 40 square feet with as many shitty tents and hammocks as they could stuff inside it. It was kind of like a KOA, but without the campers and NASCAR shirts. We decided to beat the system and go to the deserted cove next door (roughly 400 yards from the restaurant) and hang our hammocks there, forgoing the 10 dollars they were charging in the gringo ghetto dubbed the ‘camping area.’

The next day, faced with the dilemma of more possibly lame camping at the beaches further into the park or leaving, we opted to chance it and check out Playa Brava. After 4 hours of pretty intense hiking up and down hills in humid 100 degree Caribbean Jungles, we started hearing ocean waves. The jungle opened up into a lush field with an empty pool, a dilapidated volleyball net, some shacks, and cabanas. Past the cabanas was a giant, pristine, white-sand laden cove with 6 to 8 foot waves crashing upon each other. Our inner children took the reins and we sprinted for the monstrous surf; for the next half hour, we were 6 year olds being thrown around like rag dolls by the forces of nature.

We found out later that Playa Brava started out as a cocaine shipping port, due to its remoteness and proximity to the Caribbean and US. As a cover, they installed a swimming pool, volley ball court and a few half built buildings and called it a resort under construction. As the smuggling shifted away from the Caribbean and to the Pacific, there still remained a really sweet vacation spot. The buildings were never finished (and the shells are still there) and a few Cabanas were built next to the beach. Andres, a Colombian writer who weathered the intense hike out to Playa Brava, said that he had been coming here for almost 20 years now, and literally nothing had changed about the place, which he attributes to the difficulty of getting there and the laziness of Colombians to undergo the hike and eventually trash the place.

To the left....

To the right...

On the far end of the cove there was a river that fed into the ocean with mangroves growing around it. While checking it out, we spotted blue crabs. We felt it would be quite appropriate, since we were pretty much in the middle of nowhere with minimal clothing and food, to unleash the hunters inside us. We crafted devices made out of sticks, duct tape, and knives and went about capturing hard-shelled protein sources. We devised a pretty decent system by nightfall, and equipped with our head lamps and spears, we would corner crabs, pin them down with our make-shift tools and grab them from behind by hand. After a few hours we had a pot full of crabs to boil on the beach with the few other adventurous souls that took the hike out.

The cabanas and jungle behind the beach...

The folks that ran the place were a husband and wife, their kids, and one other guy. They lived in a little house in the middle of the property and had a few light bulbs powered by a car battery. Once a week Francisco, the other guy, would take a donkey into town and load it up with supplies—this was pretty much the extent of their outside world connection.

Bonfire with other folks that made the hike out, a couple of writers (left), Ludo (closest), a couple of Googlers (Center), and me and Fatimah.

Blue crabs roasting on an open fire... I know, pretty boss...

After a few days in Playa Brava, one could really start rethinking their life; electricity starts to not seem all that necessary, simple food starts to seem pretty acceptable, and anyplace else in the world starts to seem overcrowded and stressful. We didn’t need millions of LED lights from a TV screen or a busy road full of bars for entertainment—sitting on the beach at night was a subtle but satisfying feast for the senses; jungle noises behind us, ocean crashing in front, stars above us, salt water in our nostrils, and thoughts of simpler times in our heads… well, let’s just say it was a struggle to leave.