Fried Locusts and Other Culture/HANOI - VANG VIENG

To say that I woke up refreshed would be an understatement.  I woke up as the earthly avatar of Contentedness and Well-Being.  Rather than a hangover from a night of smoking and drinking on a swaying boat, I felt more refreshed and invigorated than I had in a long time.  Maybe Southeast Asia turns all that booze and THC into vitamins, or maybe I was feeling the effects of Eating A Goddamn Snake Heart.  Regardless, I felt great, with just a touch of existential hopelessness, because oh yeah I watched The Deer Hunter right before going to bed.

And the view waking up wasn't too bad neither.

One of our last sights on the tour is The Kissing Rocks, which, let me describe them for you, look a bit like two rocks kissing.  As we came near they kissed:

Like so.

And then parted.

Like so.  Oh, and there's a story about how this is supposed to be sad, if you want to feel bad about rocks.

Our last sightseeing over, the hosts of the cruise finally let us have our breakfast.  But first: cooking class!

Work for your food!  Di di mao!  DI DI MAO!

Guess what a bunch of tired white people on a tour don't want to do before they eat?  Learn how to roll the spring rolls they've been waiting to eat.  I wish I could've been cool like the German non-couple who abstained, but I wasn't.  I rolled a bunch of damn spring rolls while the snake energy coursing through my blood hissed and left me in disgust.

After eating breakfast, including the spring rolls we had collectively made (and for which I was complimented on my rolling skills by the tour guide, natch), our ship made for the mainland.  While waiting for the docking boat, an ambiguously gendered child of an Australian family wandered over to where I was drinking beer and playing my Nintendo DS.  S/he had never played Mario before, and was able to quickly and soundly defeat my theory that Anyone Can Play Mario Immediately After Picking It Up.

"Who is the turtle?" "He's evil, he stole the princess, and HOW DO YOU NOT KNOW THIS?!"

After about five minutes and a frustrated exclamation of "I HATE the mushrooms!", the boy/girl gave up on Mario forever.  Sad news, but dry your tears Shigeru Miyamoto, at least the kid seems to have found a strong anti-drug stance.

From the dock our group is taken by van back to our individual lodgings.  There's a conversation between some Aussies saying they came north to Asia for the heat, and an American man blown away by this revelation ("That's amazing!  We go SOUTH to get warmer!").  Shut up, you're judging him too.  Back at our hostel, we ask the front desk where's a good place to get pho.  After a week in Vietnam, somehow I'd still only had it the one time.  The restaurant Highway 61 is recommended to us, so we grab a cab and hightail our starving asses over there, and learn that pho is not actually on their menu.

So, instead we buy a bunch of son tinh liqueurs.  Same same?

Rather than pho, the menu is filled with an assortment of unusual items that at first I assumed to be targeted towards tourists, but a lot of them didn't even seem to be Vietnamese in origin.  Like, say, ostrich steak.

Not a bad steak, really.

And barbecued frog legs.

Legitimately delicious.

We did buy a local dish though: a healthy serving of fried locusts.

If you say you like these you're lying (but that's okay because I did too so I would look cool)

They were a little like popcorn, if popcorn had way, way more legs and tasted like dead bugs.  Sarah didn't want us to be "those people" though (the kind of people who order the wacky foreign dish only to not eat it and forever brand themselves in the eyes of the restaurant staff as White Tourist Devils), so rather than leave a shamefully unfinished plate of perfectly good locusts on our table, she wrapped up the remainder (re: 75%) in a paper napkin and stealthily threw the greasy bundle in an alley after we exited.  Offending the waiter and instigating a race war: Averted.  Image of a giant, bipedal locust standing on the side of the road and shedding a single tear: Terrifying.

After dinner we headed over to the Thang Long Water Puppet Theatre for their Water Puppet Show.

All three words of the title are startlingly accurate.

The theater was surprisingly packed, even though there are several performances throughout the day, and even the show is...kind of boring.  The show being in a combination of Vietnamese and song didn't make things easy to follow, but I do remember a bald man with a gigantic head:

In the upper right, with the gigantic head.

And in puppet form.  Horrible, smiling puppet form.

And then at one point some of the puppets were on fire, but the thrill of danger was dashed on account of the whole show being in water.

Whomp.

After a long night of cultural appreciation and annoying fellow theater-goers when cracking smuggled beers, we spent our last night in Hanoi and left in the early, early morning for Laos.  At the airport I'm stopped because of a bottle of sunscreen in my carry-on that's over the liquid limit, so I tell them "It's only half-full."  Somehow, that works, which I'll be honest, I've never seen before.  But then, the security lady did have eyes that could see my body and face and skin.  At this point, sunscreen was pretty much my spirit animal.

From the Vientiane airport we book a bus to Vang Vieng, where we'll be staying the next few days.  We wait for a bit at a nearby cafe for our ride, while I eat flan and notice that my debit card isn't working.

Also the cat at my feet had huge tits.  I'm painting a portrait, guys.

I had enough money for the next few days, but it was still a concern.  But, there was nothing I could do at the moment, so I got on the bus and hoped the ATMs in Vang Vieng might work instead.

The ride takes about 4 hours, which was sufficiently uncomfortable and tiring enough that once arriving in town we rented a room at the first inn we came to.  At eight dollars a night, not too shabby.  Granted, the room did have a giant, dimly-lit stone bathroom with paint peeling everywhere, so it looked like our room was adjacent to the set of a Saw movie, but hey.  Eight dollars.  I take a nap, and get ready to go out.

Vang Vieng is famous for its river, which is lined with water-side bars and perfect for tubing, but it was far too late in the evening by now to check it out.  Now, everyone was wandering around the banana pancake stalls and Friends bars, another credit to Vang Vieng's fame.  Friends bars are restaurant/bars where you can lie down on pillows and watch old reruns on Friends.  Why Friends?  Because there's nothing more comforting to an overprivileged white tourist high out of his mind than an old episode of Friends.  Why is he high out of his mind?  Because most of the places here also serve drugs, that's why.

My opium-den fingernails were ready.

Some travelers will warn that, despite the prevalence of weed and what have you, rolling papers are exceedingly rare.  I'm here to tell you this just isn't true.  We saw them at a number of convenience stores, and even being sold at the front counter of our hotel (the same one that put a sign in our room warning not to smoke narcotics).  We wandered through the main strip for an hour or so, and I took note that Family Guy and Two and a Half Men had done a good job of supplanting Friends on many of the TVs.  If you want to know what it felt like to be the world's most pointless social archaeologist, it was making me hungry.  So we stopped in a restaurant.

Not the typical tablecloth for a hive of scum and villainy.

Sarah and I are each given a menu, but Sarah's turns out to have a little something extra inside it.

HELLO!

Fighting the urge to just order "one of everything", I get a pizza and a "strong happy shake".

Strong=Tastes like sipping on a bag of lawnmower clippings

The pizza was a disappointment, but that shake...I went comatose.  For the rest of the night, everything looked a little like this:

...Phoebe?  Is that you?

I Heart Vietnam/HANOI - HA LONG BAY

I decided to buy some drugs.  Sarah had made arrangements for a Ha Long Bay tour starting the next day, and I wanted a little more weed than the decoy crumbs I had been suckered into previously (Never Again, goddammit!).  This time, I was going to be cool, suave, like those handsome celebrity drug buyers you see on the TV.  But in the middle of Hanoi, where is a reliable source to turn to for drug trafficking?  I spot a young man of indeterminate age selling books on the street.  Bingo.

As it turns out, the theory I had developed in Ho Chi Minh City of "Fucking everyone around you is selling, always, yeah even that guy" held true.  As soon as I threw out an inquisitive "Tai ma?" his eyes lit up in the way that betrayed his true vocation.  Problem was, the stuff was back at his place, and he could only take one person on his scooter.  I turn to Sarah.

"This is your deal.  If you want, you go get it."  Dammit.  Now, I'm not exactly a professional when it comes to evaluating, buying, or even smoking weed.  If you asked me the difference between a joint and a spliff, I'd probably just vomit nervously.  Sarah senses my apprehension and gives me some advice: "Just make sure it's green and smells good.  You'll know the smell."  Not exactly Yoda, but better than nothing.  I gesture for my newfound dealer/book merchant to lead the way.

He takes me across the street, and then motions for me to wait.  "I go get my bike, okay?"  Okay.  I'm in front of an alley, flanked by old men squatting around their drinks.  One stone-faced local offers me one of their tiny white plastic stools.  Oh man.  As I squatted with them, I felt like the coolest motherfucker for miles.  I was James Dean buying pot off Frank Sinatra in a fedora.  But, in a completely ignorant and slightly fearful way.  My ride pulls up on his scooter, and I hop on.

I've never been totally sure on the accepted etiquette of riding bitch on a scooter taxi, whether I should put my arms around my driver's torso, or grab their hips, and the problem seemed compounded by the illicit nature of this particular scooter ride.  Opting to play it as safe and awkwardly as possible, I grabbed the back of the scooter behind me and spent the trip looking "casual" with both shoulders stiffly locked and chest out.  My driver spends the ride being legitimately casual, almost disarmingly so.  After the usual "Where you from?" and "This your first time Vietnam?", he starts to brag about the varied westerners he keeps as clients, in particular one girl "from Chi-ca-go" who buys a bag every single week.

"I can get pounds if you need!" he shouts back with pride, veering in-and-out of oncoming traffic.

"Thank you, but I only need a little bit!" I shout back.

He doesn't reply, and goes back to talking of the girl from Chicago.

We enter a dense housing development, and suddenly his mood shifts.  He preemptively hushes me.

"Here you no talk.  They think I just a book seller.  No one know I sell to you, okay?  I don't want to pay police ten, fifteen million."  I nod my consent.  500 bucks seems to me a stiff bribe, but what the fuck do I know?  If this guy wants to keep his (obviously solid) book seller cover, I wasn't about to blow it for him.  Clearly, his neighbors hadn't heard my theory.

He takes through a labyrinth of rickety, narrow staircases to his studio apartment, which despite being barely one room is still almost devoid of possessions.  He goes to the closet and from a coat pulls out a large plastic baggy.

"This is Thai stick."  Inside the rumpled bag is a 3" by 1" bar of what looks to be densely compressed marijuana.

There's no way on Earth I can smoke that much in the next three days.  Hell, smoking that much in a month would require a perseverance and determination that, ironically, smoking weed does not tend to instill in me. But: "You want to try?"  Well, I don't want to be rude.

He breaks off a piece and lights it in his fingers, cupping his palms around to contain the smoke.  "Alright, you taste."  I put my head in between his hands and breathe it in.  It...tastes like pot.

"It's good, but I don't need this much.  How much for, I don't know, half of it?" I ask.  His face washes over with displeasure.  "No, you buy all.  Very good, yes?  I give you good price.  1.5 million!"

Seeing as how I was leaving the country in a few days, and trying to keep to a budget after Australia bled me dry, I just couldn't justify spending 70 dollars on an impossible amount of weed.  I insist: "I can only spend...Three hundred, maybe four hundred thousand."  But my host was not going to be satisfied with an offer of 20 bucks.

"No, I can only sell all.  For you, 1.25 million!  Very good price!"  Maybe it was a good price, but my resolve had strengthened from so many bad deals.  Never Again.  Mercilessly, I tell him: "I'm sorry, but no thank you.  Can you take me back to my hostel, please?"  And he does, to my insane relief.

However, he is not the type to give up so quickly.  A trait that could come from either the book selling or the drug dealing, really.  The entire ride back to the hostel, made infinitely longer by my having no idea where the fuck I was, he's knocking down the price little by little down to 800,000, pleading his need to sell and be rid of this really really great tai ma, and so buy food and English books and educate himself further in the King's tongue.  Finally, to dissuade him I say that it is Sarah who won't let me spend the money, as she's my girlfriend, you see, and you know how girlfriends don't let boyfriends spend money on things like premium Thai stick and such.  He thinks about this, and replies "You ask her!  I will stay here."  And thus he parks his bike in front of the hostel, where to my dismay both he and I can see Sarah through the window, using one of the computers in the lobby.  "I'll uh...I'll go ask her," I say, heavy with the opposite of confidence.

Inside, once Sarah is close enough I start to rapidly whisper "Thedealer'soutsidebutIdon'twanttobuyanythingsoIneedyoutopretendlikeI'maskingbutyou'resayingnosojuststartshakingyourheadandsayingNoreallyloudlyokay?"

And to her infinite credit, she does.  Sarah mimes an angry refusal, and regardless of whether the dealer saw, my spine grew back enough to walk outside and lay the news on him: "Sorry, man, she says no.  You know how it is.  Girls, right?"

He accepts the news, but still insists on being compensated for his time.  "I drive you to my place, to here, I give you sample.  You give me something?"  I fish around in my pockets and find about 10,000 dong.  In USD, maybe a couple quarters.  I give it to him.  He grumbles unhappily, and finally drives off.  Back in the hostel I fill Sarah in on the rest of the story, assuring her of what she had already guessed.  I am really, really bad at buying drugs.

Sarah suggests we get dinner and I agree, having been made hungry by a long night of leading on a poor (?) book/weed salesman.  Using one of the hostel's computer, we scan Hanoi's wikitravel page for food options, and I come across this particular passage:

"The suburb of Le Mat (aka the Snake Village) has numerous restaurants specializing in cobra foodstuffs. Live cobras are stored on the premises much the same way one would find live lobsters at a Western seafood restaurant. If one orders cobra blood wine from the menu, the waiter will take a live cobra, kill it on the spot, drain the blood into a shot glass of rice wine, and top it off with the cobra's still beating heart for you to gulp down!"

I don't think I've ever had a goal so clear in my mind as that moment.  If, by the end of the night, I had not feasted on a snake's living heart, I would consider myself a failure to me, my family, and a God I don't even believe in.

After asking around the hostel for some general directions, we grab a taxi and set off to eat the coolest fucking thing possible.  Le Mat was a little outside of town, and it was either really late or they didn't receive many visitors, because as we walked along the street we were flanked on all sides by surprised, curious expressions and children screaming hello.  I was mildly concerned we wouldn't be able to find the right restaurant, on account of the whole not reading Vietnamese thing, but the prevalent snake pictures nestled in store signs cleared any confusion.  Finding one restaurant with their lights on and customers out front, we enter.

Somehow, it has to have flickering fluorescent lighting.  It just has to.

Some of the "customers" from the table in front get up and proceed to take our order, and I realize they're actually the family that owns the restaurant eating dinner.  Regardless, they're certainly open now.  As one woman waits on us patiently, our eyes scan their menu for the Vietnamese word for "horrible snake organ feast."

If I had to guess, the one with the most accent marks.

Luckily, the woman speaks first: "Cobra blood?"  We nod, trying to look as casual as possible.  You know, if you've got some cobras lying around that'd be cool, no biggie.  Whatever.

She barks a few commands towards her family, who rush off to the back of the house, some coming back with small dishes of appetizers and seasonings.  Meanwhile, Sarah goes to the use the bathroom, and I'm left to admire the decor in such pants-filling anticipation as can scarcely be imagined.

The Merry Christmas banner in March was perfect.

While Sarah was away, the boys in the family had come back, clutching a large, writhing sack.  All I could think was "Sarah's missing this!" and "Oh my god I should be filming this".  SO I DID.

And you are welcome forever.

Eating the heart was similar to eating chewy shellfish, but with an aftertaste of raw totem energy.  And it wasn't over yet.  There was also the matter of the blood:

OH YEAHHH

If you'd like to know how a shot of blood tastes, I refer you to this series of time lapse photos:

If you've ever licked a cut, it tastes like a shot glass full of that, mixed with a little bit of vodka or some kind of noxious moonshine.  For flavor, no doubt.  Now that the night's "white people do quirky native thing" ceremony was finished, the family's daughter returned from vomiting in the bathroom, and the many, many snake dishes started to appear.

Somehow, our appetites had shrank from all that snake power coursing through our veins, and we were hardly able to finish half of the plates on our table.  And they just kept coming!  I started to think maybe I had rushed into this before thinking about just how much food could be produced from a four foot snake.  Then we go to pay.  I don't want to say how much it was, but I could have bought a great deal of Thai stick for that amount.  But of course, then I wouldn't have a snake spirit giving me all that, I dunno, stamina, probably.  It's always stamina.

The next day a bus picks us up and we're taken to the docks for our Ha Long Bay tour, but it almost feels anticlimactic after last night's fuck-you to the cobra gods.  

I don't get up at 7am for anything less than a Natural Wonder of the World.

With us on the tour is a number of French and Czech backpackers, some Korean and German tourists, an Australian family, and our guide: a diminutive Vietnamese man with confidence issues and a nervous smile.  It's a two days, one night tour, and our boat for the trip turns out to be surprisingly nice.

Also disappointingly un-dragon shaped.

Sarah and I make small talk with a couple of German ladies who were traveling together, and I'll save you some time, it turns out they weren't lesbians.  Before long, the boat is moving, and we slip into the blue fog of Ha Long Bay.

Amidst the splendor of the limestone peaks lifting from the water, as if hazy, hoary giants were stretching awake from the green sea floor, I'm struck by how fucking chilly it is.  No longer is the weather hotter than two rats screwing in a wool sock.  No sir, for this I've got to bust out the microfleece.

More like UNESCO World Brrr-itage site!

After about an hour of moving through the bay, we're taken to one of the larger rock islands for a tour of the cave system.

Where we got a good view of the bay within the Bay.

Our guide probably said a lot of neat facts about the cave as we were about to enter, but no one cared because a cute dog was hanging around the front and biting our feet.  His frustration at our group's apathy was palpable, but what can you do.

PUPPY!

As our guide's dreams of being a cruise ship director were crumbling in front of his eyes, we're led up the rock face and inside.

The cave is packed with artificial lighting, old graffiti, and French douchebags.  Disdainful glances, sneering at the sound of English being spoken, and of course they're wearing scarves.  In the tropics.  The cave is also full of more penguin trash cans, just like the rest of Vietnam.

Only these ones are a little more insane asylum-themed.

And, there's a giant red penis rock:

It seems angry.

All in all, not a bad cave.  If you'd like to throw your money away, there's even a rock shaped kind of like a turtle if you squint a bunch that has a "head" you can rub.  For good luck, or stamina, or something.

It's always stamina.

After the cave tour, the group splits into pairs for kayaking.  Sarah and I paddle around the karsts for awhile, take pictures, and watch a dog hanging out at the dock shit in a rowboat.  There are some things that you don't realize you've never seen until they're happening right in front of you.

Evening soon falls and dinner is served back on the main boat.  We sit at a table with the German ladies who aren't lesbians, but are awesome.  They refused to kayak and, when told about the spring roll...rolling class that will be held tomorrow morning, they refuse that too.  They just want to drink beer.

Dinner is a delight, but I can tell we unsettled our server when we ate the vegetable garnishes in the middle of the table cut to look like flowers.  They were, we found, just for display.  After everyone had finished their meal, our tour guide decided to kick this party up a notch, and brought out the karaoke.  You know what a room full of white strangers being overcharged for drinks doesn't want to do?  If you said karaoke, you are hereby overqualified to be a Ha Long Bay tour guide.  And I think you hurt his feelings.  I steal a beer can and, together with Sarah, head back to our room to smoke drugs.

And not do any of this.

Sarah had managed to scrape together what few real bits of weed were in the tobacco scam-bag into a reasonable amount that two people of modest expectations might actually be able to get high on.  In our miniscule 3' by 5' bathroom she also fashions a beer can I had nicked from dinner into a pipe, and then MacGyvers up a blow tube using toilet paper, perfume, and the cardboard from a toilet paper roll.  She's quite a lady (uh-whoa, whoa, whoa...).  We smoke up a decent buzz, although in the process I burn a finger because the can was- You know what?  No one cares about the complaints of someone smoking pot.  No one.

My original plan had been to get high for sunset over the Bay, but it was far too cloudy and also I forgot, because I was getting high.  Now that night had set in, it was time instead to watch a movie neither of us had ever seen before, a movie that would perfectly encapsulate the experience of being afloat amidst this magical interplay of earth and water: The Deer Hunter.

And so we did.  All one hundred and eighty two minutes of it, our stoned eyes glued to the screen as we shared pulls off a bottle of Smirnoff Sarah had smuggled aboard, De Niro and Walken yelling about...something.  Meryl Streep crying.  Vietnam.  It felt like we had accomplished something profound.

Probably not though.

Apparently after everyone cleared out of the room as fast as they could, the Vietnamese servers just fucking jammed out all night.  There's...there's a tinge of regret.

Komodo Dragons and Komodo Burns/FLORES - RINCA - KOMODO - KUTA

I wake up at 5am, because apparently sleep is a luxury reserved only for better people than I, and meet my ride outside the guesthouse. My shoulder aches and my hand has blistered up, because something something about actions and consequences, which I get to ponder over while my driver pisses next to the car, then it's off to the airport. It's a forbiddingly tiny terminal, but at least there are free internet terminals (are you listening, Sea-Tac?!).

As we cross the tarmac to the plane, I get my first taste of a crowd that will become very familiar throughout Southeast Asia: the new flyers. These quaint folk start pairing off in front of the plane for photos, which is heartwarming until they can't figure out how to work the overhead bins, and soon you're dodging a mix of falling luggage, crying babies, and crushing body odor just trying to get to your seat.

This was also the first time for another, more ominous trend on my trip: being seated in an Emergency Exit row. Reading, and rereading, the emergency procedure literature helped distract from the weaponized levels of stink on this particular plane and the nagging feeling that the universe is very soon going to try and kill me.

But we land. Take that, Universe. We're now in Labuan Bajo on the island of Flores, which is the jumping point for any Komodo dragon tour. It's in the bathroom of the airport here that I started to realize how far I was from the Western world, through stickers on the toilets advising you to sit on the toilet seats, instead of crouching on top of them.


I was a slow learner myself.

I'm met outside the airport by another driver arranged by my tour, who takes me down to the pier where my boat awaits.



And there she was, in all her sea-faring glory:

A fun game to play with this picture is try to figure out where I was going to sleep on this "specially-equipped" boat, along with the 2 Indonesian crewmembers. If you guessed the ratty mattress in the middle of the wet deck, you just won yourself an awful, sleepless night!

But enough of my white-person-whining. The captain informed me I had some time before the boat would be ready, and recommended that I take in "the sights."


Pictured: the sights.

After wandering through the streets of corrugated steel street stalls and trash fires (and one curiously out-of-place Tae Kwon Do dojo), my interest became piqued by the repeated signs advertising "juc alvokat". Throwing my highly-trained linguistic skills into overdrive, I deduced this to mean avocado juice, or rather, an Avocado Milkshake. I like milkshakes. I have no big avocado qualms in my life. And I had time to kill.


Pictured: One delicious beverage. If you want to make one of these beauties for yourself, just combine ice, condensed milk, chocolate syrup, blend with avocado, and the secret ingredient:


Trash fire smoke.


Pictured here on the left is the cute little girl who made me my little slice of heaven, and then proceeded to turn her back and ignore me while I drank it.

That is, until the elderly local sitting across from me decided to act as matchmaker. With the girl and I both unmarried and without children, we were obviously perfect for each other. In the old man's own words: "No baby? You, she, baby!" His logic was as simple as it was brilliant.

However, by now the captain was finished readying the boat, and I had no time left for all the courtship and baby-making rigamarole. In quiet, pensive moments I can still wonder...what if.


Here's the captain making things "ready" in front of my lavish sleeping quarters.


Another fun game here: where in this picture is the boat's toilet? If you guessed "in a 3x3 closet crammed behind the cabin, with a roof so low you can't stand up", then you're really, really good at this game.

Finally we set off into the waters around Flores, as blue as the sky and filled depressingly with discarded Pringles cans.


My body was a'quiver with excitement and avocado chunks. At this point I noticed my fingernails had grown quite long, and I decided to keep growing them indefinitely, so as to better fit in when I tried to find an opium den later on in my travels. If you go to an opium den without opium-den fingernails, they know you ain't got no class.

I also decided to attempt realizing my life-long dream of developing sea scurvy. I probably wouldn't be on the boat long enough, but I would stay from orange juice just to be safe. I was making lots of plans. I was excited.


And yes, all the islands around here look like Jurassic fucking Park.


About halfway to the first island, I was given a lunch of hot tea and bananas, with the generous choice of either under- or over-ripe. The first mate stared at me as I ate.

I spent much of the boat ride simply sitting on the open deck and watching the island scenery sail by under the noon sun. So, I'd like to take a moment to pass on a bit I wrote in my journal around this time: "I've hurt my shoulder, busted my shin, and blistered my hand, but I've only got two mosquito bites that I've found, and only lightly sunburned so far. Not quite a flawless victory, but I'll take it."

Oh, Jamie. You poor sweet dumb motherfucker.


After arriving at the island of Rinca, a man waiting at the dock ushers me along a path while my boat crew stays behind, hopefully not going through my things.


Just on the walk to the tourism center alone we passed a clearing filled with monkeys. By now I've had my fill of these little bastards, but at least these ones didn't try to rob me.


Pictured: one of the coolest things you're going to see all week. A display of all the skulls they've found of animals devoured by the Komodo dragons.

At the main building I pay an entrance fee and I'm issued a tour guide who'll guide me along one of the hiking trails and point out all the neat bits. I can almost taste those dragons.


Oh fuck yes. Turns out the scaly monsters were right outside, drawn by the smell from the kitchen. There's only thing left to do.


Ride the- I mean, take a picture a safe distance away from them. My guide was very insistent about this. I asked what would happen if one bit me, and he replied I would have to be air evac'd to Bali, where I would probably get a limb or two chopped off. Still, they look like they're just made for a saddle...

After me and the other few tourists around finished freaking out about the goddamn dinosaurs in front of us, my guide and I started our hike proper.


Here's a dumb old buffalo. At this point it was hard to think about animals in terms other than what they'd look like as a dragon-ravaged skull.


Here's some holes where Komodo dragons lay their eggs. Fun Fact: many of the holes are fake, to fool egg-snatching predators. Bonus Fun Fact: Komodo dragons are parthenogenic, which means the females can lay and hatch eggs without ever meeting a male. The eggs would hatch male, and then the males could mate with the mother, and produce male and female offspring, and repopulate an empty environment. You know, just in case (picture now, if you will, the Komodo dragon post-apocalypse). And provided the mother doesn't eat her children, because some of the adults do that. Cannibal lizard incest. The more you know.


"Yeah, I'll fucking do it. My mouth's got 57 different strains of bacteria, and they're all hungry."

Check out these trees, man. These trees are freaking punk.


And as we pass more trees, we find another morbid Komodo dragon trophy case. Fun Fact: Komodo dragons are also called Komodo monitors, by people who spend their professional and personal lives being lame.

But check out this island:

Seriously.

Jurassic Goddamn Park.


We finished the hike back at the main building, ready for more Komodo dragon pictures. And we were just in time for lunch! The National Park people talked a lot about how they didn't feed the Komodo dragons, and now they were going to feed the Komodo dragons. Plus, there were some adorable baby dragons running around. You know what they call them in Indonesian? Kodomo Komodo. I don't do this often, but hearing that... :)

Then my camera ran out of batteries. I did get to watch the video of the dragon-feeding that a German/Slovenian family had taken, and I could feel my hairline receding out of self-disgust. What I'm saying is, that video was amazing, the locals dangling meat on the end of poles out the windows, and dragons climbing and jumping off trees to try and get at it. Shit damn that was cool.

My hiking accomplished, I was getting ready to head back to the boat when the guy working the concession stand asks if I'd like a beer. Hey, don't have to twist my arm, buddy. Three beers later and I'm talking to two local Rincans using the true universal language: chicks. They discover I lived in Korea, and like most Southeast Asian dudes I've met they are hot as hell for Korean girls and want to know all about them. But when asked their favorite nationality for the opposite gender? One vote Russian, and one vote Uzbek. Huh. Alright. However, perhaps the biggest surprise these remote islanders had for me was they knew who Arcade Fire was. But, as is often the case, they said they prefer Michael Jackson.

That night, back on the boat we head to Kalong Island for something I had completely glossed over in the itinerary (mostly because it didn't have the word "dragon" in it), and that's the nightly display of flying foxes. A flying fox is basically a huge bat, and every night tens of thousands of them come out and fly around this island looking for food.

My camera is not the greatest, so out of those thousands I was able to capture maybe half a dozen in photo. You are welcome.

We ate a meager dinner on the boat, and I tried to sleep, an attempt which I'm sure brought a smirk to the lips of any divine forces out there.


The next morning our boat cruises into Komodo Island with my enthusiasm waning a bit, having already done my dance with the dragons.


Still, I suppose it couldn't hurt to just take a look around, could it? Actually, yes, it could hurt.


For today marked the beginning of The Omega Sunburn. Remember way back when I wrote that boastful journal entry about not having a sunburn? Turns out, "sitting on the open deck and watching the island scenery sail by under the noon sun" is pretty much the worst idea when you have no sunscreen.

Whoops! Meanwhile, my skin was turning redder than a virgin period.


Just in time for some more HIKING! Having paid a ridiculous amount to be here, I'd be damned if I was going to let my demon burn keep me from seeing the damn island. Still, I did opt for the medium trail, on account of whenever I walked, sat down, stood up, or really did anything that required motion my legs felt like they were full of deranged mutant fire ants. And they had tiny fire ant knives. And I had slept with all of their girlfriends.

But at least I had good shoes. So let's get on that trail, shall we?!


I started the hike on the last island through a quaint meadow filled with monkeys. This time, I find a giant spiderweb, and no animals, presumably because there is somewhere a giant spider that has murdered them all.


This is a picture of some bird that, I dunno, is probably endangered. I only took this photo because there was no other wildlife around, at all. None of the wild horses or boars I was promised. But surely the place must be teeming with its namesake dragons?


This here is one of the very few Komodo dragons I saw on Komodo Island. At least he was a big fella. Did you know Komodo dragons were the inspiration for the dinosaurs in the original King Kong?


Yeah, I can see this being Skull Island.


And I found another one. As cool as it is to pose next to Komodo dragons, it's also a nigh-unbearable pain to kneel when the skin around your knees has taken on the texture and elasticity of fried chicken. Moving on.


Some Komodo dragon shit. Better than nothing? (no)


Even the random decorations set up by bored islanders weren't as cool as the ones on Rinca. Big-ass shells? That wouldn't work at all for the cover of a metal album!

There was, however:

quite

a

decent

view.

I found one more Komodo dragon, and this time my camera had a full charge. I was gonna film the shit out of it.

The biggest lizard on Earth, ladies and gentlemen.

This time when I finished the hike and was making my way back to the boat, I was approached about buying the same carved Komodo dragon figurines you can find anywhere around here. No thanks. After I declined, the same guy then offered "what about dragon claw?"

Okay, now I'm listening.

He brings me over to a friend of his, who opens a Tupperware container full of twine, jewelry, and yes, Komodo dragon claws. I bargain down to about ten dollars for one of the necklaces, take my prize and head back to the boat, watching out for park rangers as Tupperware guy warned me to.

But then doubt sets in. Should I have bought the thing? I definitely didn't feel good about contributing to poaching, if that's what was happening. What if I was helping bring about their extinction by encouraging this trade?! What if a mama dragon was gonna have to fuck her kids to repopulate, all because of me? Plus, you know, it was reeeal illegal.

In the end, I chucked it overboard, telling myself that I couldn't get the metal around the claw through an airport metal detector, and if I hid it in my luggage that was guaranteed to be one of the few things the x-ray guys actually look for around here.


Still. I miss you.

The next and penultimate stop for the day was at Pink Beach. And despite my terrible armor of devil-skin, I was able to appreciate the place for what it was: simply the most incredible beach I've ever seen.



The boat moored about 500 yards from the shore, because there was simply too much coral to go any further, which is one of the greatest problems you'll ever hear. This meant I got to jump off the side of the boat, and snorkel all the way up to the beach. And, of course, the coral was absolutely stunning.

Of course, snorkeling is a bit trickier when your entire body is trying to reject your flesh like a hostile virus, and your muscles give out on you every few strokes. Still, I made it to the shore and proceeded to just lie in that perfect, perfect sand while the world simply stopped all around me. Very likely, making my sunburn worse all the while. I just...couldn't...care.

But eternity came to an end and I made it back to the boat after summoning what little energy was left in my pitiful mess of a body. I try to move as little as possible as the boat heads back to Labuan Bajo in Flores, the tour come full circle. After we dock, I'm taken to my hotel room for the night, cruelly situated at the top of what seems like all the stairs in this hemisphere. My driver asks if I'm okay, I ask where I can buy some sunscreen, or aloe vera. He's never heard of either. Goddamn tanned islander sons of bitches...

I'm given a free meal ticket for dinner, but I blow that off to sleep, and then sleep some more. When I wake up, it's night out, and I find that my sunburn has not disappeared within the last few hours.


Dang.

I finally eat at a place called The Lounge, because they have a sign saying they're recommended by Lonely Planet, and I was not in the mood to be flexed with right now. I was in the mood for brick oven pizza for tourists and some sort of tropical fruit smoothie, and that's exactly what I had before limping back to my room to lie perfectly still on my bed till morning. Except when I had to pee, which involved trying to massage the skin around my knees enough so that standing upright in one place hurt a little less than the worst pain de Sade would imagine upon his enemies.

When it's light out I attempt to shower, which feels like someone's replaced my water with battery acid that is also on fire. My driver for the airport shows up with some breakfast, and we motor off. At the terminal I overhear a Swedish guy talking about some anti-inflammatory medication he bought, and I hobble over to ask if I can buy some from him. He's out, but gives me an Ibuprofen. The flight back to Bali was fine, except for the child crying directly behind me, and the person seated next to me who thought I had a skin disease and was trying his hardest to minimize contact with me. S'okay. I'd probably do the same. When we land I look for the guy who's supposed to drive me into Kuta, the party center of Bali (me being in perfect condition to do such), but I don't see any signs for my name. Instead, a couple Swedish dudes (including the same one who gave me the Ibuprofen) ask if I'd like to share a cab with them. They're headed to Kuta as well, cab fare split 3 ways is dirt cheap, I say yes.


I'd also like to point out that by this point my burn was so bad that my face had swollen to twice its size. I did not know that was a thing that happened.

The Swedes get a room in a cheap guesthouse, where they let me stash my backpack. They've noticed that my face is, well, wrong, and I go with them to finally get some motherfucking aloe vera. While we eat some sushi, I just rub that shit all over. I would've drank it if i could.

I don't have a flight to catch till later that night, so I also join them in looking around town.


This is the Bali Bomb Memorial. We asked for directions to it, while standing right here.


This is a monkey riding a tiny motorcycle. Because sometimes the world is great.

But sometimes...

Your sunburn forms monstrous hell-blisters around your ankle. Imagine my surprise when during dinner I notice my socks are itching, pull them down, and find these.

The guys suggested I lance it in the bathroom. So I did.
And filmed it. Be thankful you can only see the process in silhouette.

We eat dinner at a touristy joint called Mojo's Flying Burritos, which happened to be playing a mix of Abba tunes all night, much to the delight of my new Swedish friends. At least in my suffering I was not alone. The rest of the time before my flight is spent with them back at the guesthouse, drinking copious amounts of Bintang beer and listening to Pixies and the Doors. The day had ended up being one of my worst mornings and best nights.

At the airport I'm actually stopped by the check-in woman for my flight to Australia, who noticed my ankles and asked with genuine concern if I was okay to fly. Of course, I responded. I was drinking lots of water, and had some aloe vera. What more do you need? Better aloe vera, for one. This shit had alcohol in it, which I later found makes aloe vera just plain not work.

The flight itself was underbooked, so luckily I was able to lay down across an entire row of seats and sleep in short, fitful bursts between the sounds of children crying and the flight attendants waking me up for awful fried rice I had pre-purchased. I was done with Bali, at least for the time being. My body was a wretched wasteland of open sores and skin that was hardening at a frightening rate, but in a few hours I would be in Australia. That would make things better.

Maybe.