The 7th Sign Of The Apocalypse

(Brad and Kari on the first day of the rest of their lives togther.)

Congratulations to Brad and Kari who got engaged on Sunday! For the rest of us, I'm sorry. The world is clearly coming to an end. If you had told any LHS graduate in '97 that Brad would be one of the first to get married from our group of friends we would all have agreed that it would be a sign of the Apocalypse. However, Brad is officially engaged...to a girl...and a fantastic girl.

For those of you who read my blog and don't know Brad, he's one of my oldest and best friends. I basically taught him everything in life except how to have a committed relationship. He clearly learned that from someone else. And, I guess he taught himself school stuff too since he's always been exponentially smarter than me. Actually perhaps the only thing I ever taught him was how to use the internet....although I learned how to use the internet on his computer while I used to house sit his cats (also where I learned to despise cats...which Brad loves. Shoot, I haven't taught Brad anything).

Anyway, If you're wondering how this relates to my travel blog, well, I guess it means I'll officially be coming home at some point now since I have to go to the wedding. I'm pretty certain my parents are bribing Brad to have the wedding as soon as possible...

My Second Encounter With The Police

(PICTURE: My first encounter with the police about a month ago in Da Nang)

Technically if you drive a motorbike out here you're supposed to have a Vietnamese driver's license. But come on, nobody does that. It doesn't really matter unless you get pulled over by the cops...which I've been told happens a lot to foreigners. However, even in those cases you just need to slip the cop some cash and be on your way. Ironically the other day while I was with Huyen I asked why some cops had just pulled over a few drivers. She told me that they had driven through a red and were going to get a ticket. Driving through red lights is something people do here. It's second nature to them. Literally you can wait at any traffic light and count the seconds after a light turns red that cars/buses/bikes still go through the intersection. On average I'd say it's "Three Mississippi." Although, I once actually counted to "5 Mississippi" and drivers were still shooting through the red. Huyen commented to me that she got a ticket last year for going through a red and I replied, "I'm not worried about that happening to me since I always follow the law."

Of course one of the rules in life is if you say something the opposite will soon happen. And of course, that happened yesterday morning. I was driving to Language Link at 7AM when I made a right on a red light. Like in NYC, apparently it's illegal. In a case of perfect timing, a cop was standing ten feet away in the street. He blew his whistle at me and waved his night stick at my face signaling for me to pull over. He started ranting at me in angry Vietnamese and all I could think was, "How much am I gonna have to pay this guy?" (For those LA friends, this is similar to our trip to Mexico when we had to pay off the cop because I ran over the curb with our RV). Anyway, I don't know what struck me but I had a moment of pure inspiration. I looked at the cop, opened my eyes wide and made the worst grimace I could possibly make. I grunted out, "My stomach. My stomach" and winced like I was about to poop my pants. The cop just looked at me and began yelling even more and making motions with his stick. Once again I winced and pointed at my stomach. This time I added, "I teacher. My stomach. School. There (I pointed down the street). I teacher. My stomach. Ughhhh." I gave one more painful look at the cop and then he miraculously waved me off. Yeah, I got off free! That's right, my luck is turning!!!

Now I know some of you are saying to yourself, "I didn't know you were such a good actor, Ben." Well, don't be so shocked. I am the same person who was once called in to an audition after Steven Spielberg himself saw me in my friend Sam's short film. For those of you not familiar with this story I'll give you the ending: I blew the audition. Yeah, I'm basically only good at acting like I've got diarrhea*.

* The truth is, if you read my previous blog, I was only half acting.

Cold, Flu or Dengue Fever?

(VIDEO: Huyen cooking me lunch to make me feel better)

For the last couple of days I've been pretty under the weather. I've got a slight fever, extreme body sweats, congestion in my head, a runny nose and aches in my muscles and joints. If I was in the USA I would just assume I have a nasty little cold or a slight case of the flu. Further evidence of this would be the fact that Ryan has been sick for about a week.

That said, I'm not in the USA which makes me slightly paranoid that I may have something worse than the cold or flu. For example I'd say there's a fifty-fifty shot I've got Dengue Fever. It's prevalent in Southeast Asia and all it takes to get it is a bite from an infected mosquito. According to wikipedia here are the symptons:

This infectious disease is manifested by a sudden onset of fever, with severe headache, muscle and joint pains (myalgias and arthralgias—severe pain gives it the name break-bone fever or bonecrusher disease) and rashes. The dengue rash is characteristically bright red petechiae and usually appears first on the lower limbs and the chest; in some patients, it spreads to cover most of the body. There may also be gastritis with some combination of associated abdominal pain, nausea, vomiting or diarrhea.

Other symptoms include:

• fever;
• bladder problems;
• constant headaches;
• severe dizziness; and,
• loss of appetite.

These symptoms are quite similar to the common cold/flu. Making me even more nervous is that I just had a rash. Granted it's gone but still, I had a rash! And well, my stomach always hurts! And on top of that I've only been eating one serving of food at meals. I think that easily constitutes a loss of appetite. Oh, god, I have Dengue Fever!!!!!

By the way, I turned the camera off too soon on this video. A second after I turned it off Huyen says, "I am Vietnamese. I am strong. I do not get sick like you."

TRIVIA: Can you name these two fruit?

(PICTURE: Two very common fruit)

This is just a small example of the language difficulties. Take a guess what these two fruits translate to from Vietnamese to English.

Ahoy Hanoi Thanks Steve Song

(PICTURE: Steve and I at the snake village)

For weeks I've been secretly composing a blog entry to post when Steve left. Being a pacifist I didn't want any awkward confrontation after I posted this: "When I first arrived in Vietnam a local told me that the Vietnamese hate Korean people more than people from any other country. I asked why to my local friend but, because of the language barrier, she could not communicate the reason very articulately. That said, after hanging out with Steve for a few weeks I'll never ask why someone would hate a person of Korean decent again. To be fair, I could honestly say I don't hate Steve-- I loathe Steve. I then went on to list 319 reason why it was taking all my internal strength not to smother Steve with one of my $2 pillows in the middle of the night.

However, I'm not going to post that entry because -- to loosely quote Dumb and Dumber -- Steve totally just redeemed himself. Yesterday morning, as he was sitting shotgun in the airport taxi, he had the cab driver roll down his window and called me over. Steve said, "Hey, look on your bedside table. I left you a gift." I assumed he had just left me the same gift he'd been leaving for weeks--toe nail clippings on my floor. However, this time he left me something a little bit better--his digital camera. That's right, Mr. Paparazzi himself left me his camera which has literally been on his body every second for the last couple of months. This was beyond a nice gesture and I, and all Ahoy Hanoi fans, are grateful. This means new pictures will soon be posted with my blogs. So, on behalf of America, thank you Steve Song. (For Steve's version of why he left me his camera I once again direct you to his blog: www.songeruncensored.com).

In other news, I went to the library yesterday and they have exactly 56 fiction book in English. Out of those I've read about half of them already. Now I'm sure you're saying to yourself, "28 book is enough toilet reading to keep you busy for the year, Ben." Well, you're right. The problem is you can't read Vietnamese library books on the toilet. In fact, you can't read Vietnamese library books anywhere except a designated place in the library. Books in Vietnamese libraries can't be taken home with you. Yeah, you have to go there and read. I mean, really? Who reads at the library besides senior citizens?

For Those Of You Who Thought I Was Kidding

I'm about to take the final step in becoming a local. Nope, I'm not getting married. It's that other step--I'm getting a library card.

For those of you who are wondering, no the snake didn't sit well.

Fear Factor Trained Me Well

(PICTURE: The lucky snake.)

Steve returned to Hanoi yesterday after his ten days of exploring Southeast Asia on his own. Well, I think some solo time put some hair on his chest. When he showed up on my front steps he literally looked more like a man than he ever had before....although the hair on his chest was actually just thirty whiskers on his chin.

Before Steve had left, we promised him we'd go to the snake village when he returned. I'm not sure if he really even wanted to go to the snake village but I sure did. So Ryan, Steve and I hopped into a cab and took off. Well, we wanted to take off but the cab driver didn't know what the hell we were talking about despite our very obvious snake gestures. So I called Huyen and put her on the phone with cab driver. A minute later we were off...


After some heavy negotiation at the snake restaurant the owner/cook agreed to make us a nine course meal, including rice wine and snake blood, with a fresh snake. Second later the guy pictured in the purple shirt brought out a live poisonous snake. We took some pictures and then he preceded to slice open the snake and remove it's beating heart. He put the heart into this little shot glass:




The guy then motioned for one of us to drink the heart. Well, I knew Steve wouldn't do it since he recently bragged on his blog about how brave he was that he ate a fried cricket. That's Single A versus the majors of eating a beating snake heart. I thought Ryan would want to try the heart and was prepared to rock, paper, scissor him for it. But, alas, Ryan passed too. So it was all mine...


(PICTURE: Snake heart mixed with its blood)

It was delicious.