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SE Asia Chronicles Podcast Transcript #19

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Good afternoon from Southeast Asia. This will be... Jesus makes me do it. This will

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be episode or volume number 19 of the Asian... I almost did it again... of the

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Southeast Asian... Southeast Asia Chronicle podcast things. Good God!

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Some antibiotics, they do something to your brain. I don't know what, but it ain't nice.

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Been off now for 48 hours and I'm getting better, but... Yeah, I took a couple of

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loops around Neptune there, you know, courtesy of some really exotic antibiotics.

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It wasn't even fun. Wasn't scenic either. Okay, we are trying to help you decide if

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you want to escape the quote-unquote matrix in your beautiful, relaxing,

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perfect Western country and go somewhere else like Southeast Asia. I can't tell

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you what it's like in South Africa. Don't know. Mostly don't care. But I can tell

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you what it's like in Southeast Asia. And that's what we're doing. We're trying to

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help you figure out if you can afford to go there. Do you want to go there? What's

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it gonna be like when you get there? Are you gonna like it? Hate it? You're gonna go

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back home in three months? I've been here so long that I don't consider... I

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considered the USA my home by a factor of about 5% until I went back the last

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time last year. Now it's zero. It's not my home. It's some alien place. I barely

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recognize it. It's a zombie apocalypse. Who makes up the zombies? Well, the

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zombies and the government equally. They're both at about the same level of

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stupidity. So I don't... if I have any home it's Southeast Asia. All of it, I guess. I

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don't know. Whatever. Okay, so we're just... we're being overloaded with these

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questions from each previous episode. I haven't even downloaded the batch from

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the last one. Geez. People are asking me, why is it so hot in your studio? You're

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always wiping your face. What the hell? You got air conditioners, right? Well,

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yeah, we do. We got two of them. It's a tiny little concrete bunker thing on the

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top of a building in downtown. And yeah, we got two well-functioning air

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conditioners, but we can only run the one... the little one, the smallest one, in

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another room. Because if we run the one in this room, then the level of room noise

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becomes prohibitive, and we can't get rid of that much ambient noise. God, if you

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listen to the old alien tapes, especially the old ones, the noise was

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just horrific. A lot of those were made in a huge five-story concrete shophouse

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thing. And I can't remember, seven air conditioners, something like that. Most of

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them were going all the time. Could not shut them off. They could barely keep up.

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They're always on full, always on high. Had fans going everywhere, could not shut

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them off. And the ambient noise level was through the roof. So anyway, that's why

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we can only run one here. We got to run it in the other room. And then we've got

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a super quiet, supposedly quote-unquote, specialty fan that moves some air from

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that room into this room, and blows it right on me. And still, this is the best

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we can do. It's hot. It's probably lower 90s, right in this room. I don't know. And

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so, yeah, face wiping is just going to continue forever and ever, I

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guess. I don't know. We're pretty creative, but that's the best we can do. That's why.

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Okay, you ask and we answer. Now, in the last one, we were talking about some

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experiences in Laos. I roamed Laos for quite a while. And I like it. Kind of.

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Shockingly backwards, shockingly poor. Slow. Slow. Everything is slow. If you're a

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person who likes to get anything done. In Laos, maybe it's not the place for you.

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You... well, every place in Southeast Asia is going to be slower, except maybe Manila.

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Bangkok is pretty peppy. That's about it. Pretty much everything else is slow. But

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Laos is another four levels slower. So think about that if you're starting to

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think about Laos. If you can acclimate to it, it can be okay. But it's a hard thing

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for a Westerner to do. Westerners... even if you're living on a chicken farm out

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in the middle of Utah, you're operating too fast, probably, at a too high level,

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probably, to just slip right into life in Laos without acclimating to it and

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slowing down. Another quite a bit, quite a bit more. Laos is slow. Is it the

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slowest place I know of in Southeast Asia?

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I don't know. There's places in Central Vietnam that are... yeah, they're that slow. Yeah.

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There's places... I don't think any place in Thailand is that slow. Even out in

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Isan. If you want super, super, super, super slow, where the people aren't bad,

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usually, where they think slow and they act slow and they decide slow and they

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choose slow, that's Laos. If you like really nice people, some of the best

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people I ever met all of Southeast Asia were in Laos. They're called the Hmong.

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There's an ancient front of that. It's almost that. Hmong. I'm saying it, but it's

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a... you know, normally you would say Hmong. No, it's not Hmong. It's Hmong. M-U-N-G.

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They were mountain people, farmers. The Vietnam War, we the Americans bombed the

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living Jesus Christ out of them. F-cked them up. Really f-cked them up. Really f-cked

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them up bad. In exchange, we moved an awful lot of them into the US. They were

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born to farm. I mean, Pol Pot should have gotten those people. They... all of the

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ones that I've met... now, people maybe have other stories. I don't know. But I've

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met them. I've met quite a lot of them in different contexts, in different

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countries. All, all, not most, all to date of the ones I've met were some of the

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nicest, most honest people I've ever met anywhere else in the world. If you want

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to go to a really, really, really slow place and be around really, really good

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people, do more research on the Hmong in Laos. I think there's some in Vietnam

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also. They tend to live in the higher mountain areas. And they just farm. They just

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mind their own business and they farm. Smart. Smart. I think they're probably aliens.

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I don't know. Okay, so we were telling stories about Laos last time. And I, and I said

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in this episode we get one more we're gonna tell. And then, I don't know, I'll

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lay off Laos stories at least for a while. I was in Laos one time. And I was in

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the central region again because that was the region that I knew. I went this

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time without a guide. Got a different motorbike that had most of its lights.

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It's still a piece of shit. I don't know how they think they can rent these

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things, but they do. Anyway, this one had the brakes were either on or off. You

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downshift, downshift, and downshift. You get going as slow as you can and you

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lock up that rear brake and you slide, you stop. You just touch it and it locks.

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You know, that's all there was. It was on or off. One or zero, you know. That's all

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there was. And anyway, so I was tooling around on that thing and I was in

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central Laos. I was headed over to the Vietnam border, presuming the motorbike

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Mike was gonna wheeze that for. And I stopped someplace and I don't even know

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where. I was hungry. I cannot remember where. It was a very central part of Laos.

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And there was an intersection. I was on highway, which is just a two-lane road.

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That's as good as I get. That's all there is. And houses are built, you

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know, almost to the road. That's a really big problem. I'll digress just for a

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second. All those houses have kids and chickens and goats and dogs and, you

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know, everything. But they have a lot of kids. Big ones, little ones, every age. And

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they play in the front yards all day, all day. Some places have schools, some don't.

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And these kids, well, they're little kids, okay. They're little kids. They're doing what

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little kids do. They're kicking balls and the balls run into the highway and they

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don't look. They just run out there. And it's a fairly busy highway, mostly with,

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yeah, they call them tuk-tuks. They're tuk-tuks on steroids. They're like

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military personnel vehicles, big trucks with bench seats in them. And those are

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like their buses. They do have some buses too. But these trucks are much more

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common. I'm not sure why. I guess because they can be multi-purposed. You know, you

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jerk the seats out. You can haul cattle or something. I don't know. Or, well, not cattle, but

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probably pigs. So they're just barreling up and down this highway at 50. You know,

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that's barreling in Laos. That's barreling in Laos. That's streaking. And the kids

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would kick a ball. Something goes in the road. They just run out there. They tuk-tuk, hits them.

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This became so common over so many years. I can't even begin to count how many

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families lost a kid or two out on that highway. It's tragic. It must have been

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hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of kids slaughtered

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on that highway. And finally, the Laotians, they finally did get it. They finally got it. And instead of

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building a fence, you know, to keep the kids from running out there, probably

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wouldn't stop them anyway. All the drivers of all the vehicles got it. And so, if

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they were coming close to a house, if they're coming up upon a house or row of

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houses or something, sometimes the row of houses would go for a mile or two or

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three on each side. And they saw these houses coming up. They would slow way

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down, probably 25, no more than 25. And they start beeping on that horn. Just beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep,

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you know, just trying to be, you know, artistic with their beeps. The deal was

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to let all the kids know, hey, we're coming. Do not freaking run out in front of us.

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Do not do it. Do not do it. We cannot stop in time. And it worked. The kids got used

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to it. Maybe in time it wouldn't work because they would start tuning it out. I

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don't know. But what I saw was that the kids, the kids were getting a little

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jaded by it already. But they would still hear that me, maybe even they'd

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glance and they'd go back to playing with the ball. But at least that got

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their attention, you know. Maybe that little neural connection got forged.

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You know, oh, truck, truck, don't run out there. Dead, you know. Maybe, maybe that

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got forged. And the times that I've ridden those personnel carriers up and

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down that same highway, nobody got hit. And the drivers were really, really

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vigilant on watching for them. And a lot of the passengers would watch out there

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too. And if they saw any kid break from the group and start running towards the

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edge of their yard, towards the highway, they're banging, banging, banging on that

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window, on the back window. For the driver, the driver would go down to ten miles an

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hour and maybe he didn't even see it. But he's on the horn anyway. And I think

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that probably saved hundreds and hundreds, maybe countless hundreds of lives. It was

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a cool thing to watch play out. God, they tried, they tried hard. They tried as hard

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as you could try. Period. And then they got past the houses and they're back up

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to 50, you know, because they got to get somewhere. The, the, the, the tuk-tuk rides

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that I took across there, some of them were eight, nine hours. So it was fair

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distance, you know. And oh god, just horrible, hot, windy, dusty. Some sections are

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dirt. You got a hundred trucks ahead of you. Okay, anyway. So anyway, I was on that road, on

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this motorbike. And that was another place where if, if you got opposing traffic and

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they want to pass, they just pull over and you go off the road. That's all there is to it.

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You don't have a place to go off the road. Too bad. You're gonna crash. That's all.

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You're just gonna run you off the road. That's all there is to it. So every time you see a

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line of traffic coming your way, you know that one or two or three of them is gonna

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jerk out there and try to pass somebody in front of them. So you're riding pretty

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much on the shoulder, you know, at 50 miles an hour. Still trying to get where

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you're going. If you slow down every time, then you never get where you're going.

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It's, statistically, Thailand is the most dangerous place to drive. I think India

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is. But I, but I, I've never seen the stats there. But it's not listed as the

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most dangerous place on the web. Well, in fact, Thailand isn't either. Thailand is

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listed as number two, number three, number four, depending on the year. The

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independent researchers have come in and drilled down through their books in

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Thailand and said, excuse me, no, you're number one. You're just cook these books.

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You're number one. You're the worst. Most dangerous. Anyway, my vote would have gone

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to India. Lao, Lao to me seems like it's worse than Thailand. It just seems to me

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like it's worse. I haven't seen any evidence of that whatsoever. Lao doesn't

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put out any books. In fact, I don't even know if they do today, but you could not

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find any roadmap for Lao. When I was hanging around there, there was no

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roadmap. Didn't show any road in the entire country. They just didn't put them

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out. Nobody put them out. I mean, sooner or later they're gonna have to. Maybe they

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have by now. That was a lot of years ago. Okay, so I'm on this motorbike.

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Weezing, smoking, scraping. It's a three-legged donkey, okay. And I'm hungry and I'm on

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this highway and I get to an intersection. You go one way, you go to

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some lookout thing or something. I didn't care about that. I didn't want to go. I

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just wanted to find some food. And there's a... there's like two and a half food stands

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there in this intersection. Both on the left-hand side. And I looked like the

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biggest one. Well, it was the one that was like one and a half food stands.

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Because it was like one regular food stand and then there was a little one

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like just a few feet from it. I thought, okay, best chance of getting somebody. So I

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stopped there. And the biggest one had a Laotian man... no, no, no, no, wait. It's a

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deal. Had a Laotian woman. I think the man was Chinese. She was 30, 35. The man was

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60. But that's Southeast Asia. That's it. That's the way it is. That's the way it is.

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It's not gonna raise any eyebrows except in Bangkok, you know. Really prissy

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Victorian people in Bangkok. So I stopped. I went to the big one. And I'm looking to

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see what they have. Well, what the hell? They don't have anything. All they've got are

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bananas. What? That's all you got? Really? You don't have drinks? You don't have, you

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know, musketeers? Bar? You don't have anything. And I looked right behind the woman about

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30, 40 feet away. There's a row of banana trees. So bananas just hanging there.

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They're ripe. They're ready to eat right now. And I'm thinking, well, why don't I just walk

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over there? But I thought maybe that was somehow culturally rude. And so I didn't

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do it. And so I bought, oh, I know what it was. I told her I wanted three bananas, two

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to eat now, one for the road. She said, okay. And she said how many, how much it was gonna

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be. And it was just nothing. It was like 10 or 15 cents the equivalent of just nothing.

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It was just a couple of little coins. And I thought, well, that's pretty cheap. That's

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really cheap. Okay. And so I gave her the money. I think she had to give me change.

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And I walked around for a minute waiting for her to like bag up the bananas, whatever she

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was gonna do. Go get them and go pick them probably. And that took me about 60 seconds.

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And I walked back and no bananas are on the counter. And I'm like, well, do you have,

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I ordered banana, you know, I can't speak Laotian, not one word. And she just pointed to my motorbike.

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They were already in the basket on the motorbike. Oh, gee, thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

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She didn't understand the tie. And so I walked over and I thought, wait, wait, wait, wait,

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wait, wait, wait, what is this? There's three huge clumps of bananas, not three bananas. There's

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three huge clumps. What the hell? I can't eat these in two weeks, you know? What the hell?

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And I hadn't even seen any monkeys to give them to. And that's usually fun.

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I don't know that they love you for it necessarily, but now take them and

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screech at you and run, you know? That's fun, whatever. And I took them back and I said,

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no, no, no, I only want three, three, I want three bananas, one, two, three. She said, no,

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no, no, you pay, you pay, you pay already. No, no, no, you go, you go now. What the hell? What,

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what, what, what, what do I, what do I get to do with this? I figured I would just have to throw

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them away somewhere. What I should have done was I should have driven, I should have made like I was

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going to go and then got, you know, 50 feet away right before I get on the highway and then beeped

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the horn a few times and then laid these bunches down on the ground minus the three that I wanted.

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And then I would have been gone. They couldn't force me to take them and they would have

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eventually got over there and got them. They could resell them, you know? That's why I should have

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done it. It didn't occur to me. So anyway, I took the motorbike and I didn't want to be blocking

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their stand. So I wheeled it around behind their stand, you know, 10, 15 feet behind their stand.

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And there's a little log or something there I could sit on. I thought, well, you know, I need

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a break. I'm just going to sit here. I'm going to eat a couple of bananas slowly. No kind of anything

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to drink. I'll just eat the bananas. Beyond my way. And I noticed that this, this little stall next

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to theirs, just a little abbreviated mini stall thing. And I hadn't seen anything there before.

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She hadn't, it was a girl. She was about 14 or 15 probably. She could have been older, could have been

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certainly no older than 16. Laotian girl. Really, really pretty girl.

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And she, that was her stand. And then after a few minutes, I put it together. Okay. That was her

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mom and pop over there with a big stand. And they just let her put up this little stand

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because she wanted to try to sell stuff too, but she didn't have anything to sell.

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So she probably just went out there every day and went through the motions, put up her little stand,

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but she didn't have anything to sell. I mean, she could have walked over and picked bananas, I guess.

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Anyway, she had a little boy. He was about three, more than three and a half. So she must have had him,

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could have been 12, probably maybe 13, probably 12 when he was born. And that was his thing,

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was to hang around that stall all day because he had nothing else to do. There was nobody to

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care for him. No pop, no nothing. He just had to go with the family. And he was too old to be of

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any use, you know. So he just bopped around here, bopped around there. And I hatched, oh, and then

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he came over and he's walking really slowly around my basket. He's just looking at those bananas.

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And I could tell he wanted some. He's hungry, I guess. And I'm thinking, well, wait a minute,

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why didn't mom and grandma and grandpa, why didn't they give him some of their bananas?

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You know, because I was positive it was all the same family. And I don't know the answer to that.

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Why didn't they give their daughter some bananas to sell? I never figured that out.

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So he just walked around looking at these bananas, you know, like a starving dog would look at a

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steak. And finally I picked up one bunch. And they were huge bunches. There was 15 probably in a bunch.

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And I tried to hand it to him and he ran away. Okay, shy. And a few minutes later he came back.

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I said, okay, okay, okay, let's try this differently. I broke off one. I tried to give it to him and he

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ran away. Like, oh, shit, you know, they're shy and then they're stupid, you know. And

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he just kept walking around looking, looking. Probably the first Westerner he had ever seen.

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Maybe the first one for the daughter too, because this was in a place where you're not going to get

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Westerners ever, ever. And finally I finished the two bananas. So now I have three bunches and one

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banana. And I kept the one and I took the three bunches and I walked over to the girl's little mini

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counter thing. It was like two TV trays, three TV trays. You know, that was the size of it.

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And I just walked around looking at the three of them. And I just walked around looking at the

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size of it. And she had a little roof over the top made of banana leaves. She probably had to get them

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every day and put them up there to keep the sun off. And I thought, okay, I'm going to put these

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there for this girl and then she can sell them. Maybe, maybe not. I mean, bananas are really hard

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to sell, you know, when there's trees everywhere. So I put them over there and I put them just on the

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end of her counter. You know, I didn't walk up, I didn't try to talk to her, didn't do anything.

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Just put them on the end of her counter. And then I went back and was getting on the motorbike

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and she wouldn't go near them. And I thought, what the hell, what's going on here? Maybe she

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doesn't understand that these were a gift. Maybe she thought I wanted my money back and

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something like that. I don't know what she was thinking. The mom and the pop were watching

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and I was afraid that they would go over and get them because it didn't seem like, you know,

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they really took that much care of her or the boy. I don't know. You know, in these

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cultural chasms, you know, you don't know what you're misinterpreting. You can misinterpret

249
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all kinds of stuff and you don't even know it. So who knows? I don't know what was going on.

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That's the only things that I could, those were the only things I could come up with.

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So she stayed at the far end of her counter and she looked the other way. She just turned

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back on the bananas. I thought, oh hell, this is bad. I got to make sure she understands these are hers.

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I got off the bike, walked back over there and slid them down her counter. So they're pretty close

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to her and she turned and she saw him. She looked at me and smiled a little bit and the kid is like,

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oh what the hell's going on here? What's going on? Bastard. And then I smiled and I walked back to

256
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the motorbike and I'm getting on it and I'm, you have to bungee all your stuff into your basket or

257
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the first little bump, you know, it just flies up into the air. It's gone. So you get a bungee

258
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everything into your basket. So I was hooking the bungees up in my basket to make sure my banana

259
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wasn't going to fly away. And as I was doing that, I noticed that the mom went over to the girl

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and I thought she was going to steal her bananas. I thought, oh shit, you know, how far involved in

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this am I going to get? If she takes those bananas and takes them back, what am I going to do? I'm

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going to go snatch them from the mom and give them back to the girl. How's that going to go?

263
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Then she's probably going to beat the hell out of the girl, you know. So I didn't know what,

264
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how this was going to play out. And I just watched, just sat there and watched and

265
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the mom took the girl by the arm

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and the little boy by the hand.

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The place will make you cry.

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The place will make you cry.

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And the mom walked him over to my motorbike and the father standing there.

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And the mom picks up the little boy, puts him right behind me on the motorbike. And I thought,

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wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,

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try to give me the kid. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, because I've had that happen a few times

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into the countries. People just walk up to you with babies.

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And you're thinking, okay, money, money, they want money. No. Well, sometimes they do.

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Sometimes, baby hungry, I need some money. Sometimes they got that thing. Sometimes they're

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just trying to give you a baby because the baby's starving, maybe it's sick. They can't take care of

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it anymore. There's no hope that they can ever take care of it. They're probably right on the

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verge of throwing it in the dumpster. And that's really common. And they just hand you the baby.

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If you're stupid, you'll take it. And then they walk away. Sometimes they'll run.

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And I learned pretty quickly, no, you put your hands behind your back and you back away, you

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back away, say, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, baby, no, baby, no, baby. And a lot of times they'll

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just keep coming at you trying to shove this baby in your face. And one time it was for about a

283
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three, three, about a three year old boy and it's like, oh, I'm going to get a baby. And he's like,

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three, about a three year old boy and it's like, oh, so anyway, I'm thinking, oh, God

285
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bless it. She's trying to give me the baby. Oh, geez, no, no, no. What am I going to do now?

286
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And I started to get off so I could take the baby off. And, but she was already had the girl and

287
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she was making the girl climb on the back and back of the baby.

288
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And I just, and they're trying to process this one, like, oh, this is a new twist.

289
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What? Got the baby, got the girl. What does she want me to do with the girl?

290
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What? In some cases like this, you might run into a situation where the family wants you to take the

291
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girl out in the jungle and boink around for a while, come back and give them some food.

292
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God damn it. But that wasn't the case with this because she'd put the baby on her.

293
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And she took the girl's hands and put them on my shoulders.

294
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And the mom like patted me on the shoulder, patted the girl's hand on the shoulder and said, good,

295
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good, good. And then she stepped back like I'm supposed to just drive away with a brand new family.

296
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And that really locked up my brain. I didn't know how the hell to get out of that situation.

297
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I didn't know how in the hell to get out of that because you don't want to insult them.

298
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I mean, ask yourself, what would you do? Well, I know what the Brits would do.

299
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Don't even get me started.

300
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And I sat there, not that long, probably 20 seconds trying to puzzle this through.

301
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And I finally put the kickstand down and I got off.

302
00:33:48,920 --> 00:33:55,080
And I just in a very ham-fisted, flang kind of way, I'm trying to explain, no, I cannot.

303
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In Thailand, I could have easily gotten it across. In Laos, I was just clueless. I had no single word

304
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in common, just none. But the mom did understand a tiny little smattering of English. I mean,

305
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she understood no and she understood good and you know, like that, a few words.

306
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But she didn't understand no. She understood that I was telling her no.

307
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The girl and the kid can't go. They just can't. They just can't. It's just no, no, no. It's not in my life plan.

308
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No, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. No, they're just in the way.

309
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And a part of my little reptilian brain, it's thinking, well, wait a minute, could you raise them?

310
00:34:48,600 --> 00:34:50,920
Could you raise them? You know, the daughter and

311
00:34:55,400 --> 00:35:00,440
an adopted son, could you do that? Any way you could do that? No.

312
00:35:03,240 --> 00:35:07,640
This big neon red no just kept blinking. It wouldn't go off.

313
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And the mother's speaking in Lao and she's, I was trying to help the girl get off. I took the

314
00:35:17,640 --> 00:35:22,920
boy off, put him on the ground and I'm trying to help the girl get off. And the mother's trying to

315
00:35:22,920 --> 00:35:31,800
put her back on and the mother is like patting her and then pointing at me, pat me. And then she took

316
00:35:31,800 --> 00:35:39,320
the girl and moved her so we're pressed together like you and you. Now you together. Now you married.

317
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Now you married. You know, this is your son.

318
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And I had just been in tears. I didn't know what to do.

319
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Still am.

320
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God bless it. And

321
00:36:02,600 --> 00:36:04,760
I had to get a little bit assertive to get the girl off.

322
00:36:04,760 --> 00:36:10,040
And she had tears running down her face by this time. Probably from a number of

323
00:36:12,280 --> 00:36:17,400
things, you know, just the embarrassment of the whole thing, the drama of the whole thing,

324
00:36:17,400 --> 00:36:22,680
the trauma of the whole thing. I have no idea if she had any desire to go with me or not.

325
00:36:22,680 --> 00:36:28,200
I have no idea whatsoever. Probably not. I don't know. Maybe. I don't know.

326
00:36:28,200 --> 00:36:34,360
The little boy, you know, I didn't interact with him enough to build any kind of rapport so he

327
00:36:34,360 --> 00:36:40,360
had no feelings for me whatsoever. I had zero feelings for him. Just a little boy.

328
00:36:41,560 --> 00:36:46,760
Cute little boy. Playing banana games, you know, give him a banana. That's okay.

329
00:36:49,000 --> 00:36:53,560
The mother was frustrated. The father was getting angry.

330
00:36:53,560 --> 00:36:58,920
The mother was frustrated. The father was getting a little grumpy.

331
00:37:01,800 --> 00:37:06,760
He was clearly in on this idea. He was okay with whatever the hell the idea was.

332
00:37:07,480 --> 00:37:13,400
I suppose they thought. Here's Rich Falang. He'll just take this beautiful young girl and

333
00:37:13,400 --> 00:37:20,360
they'll go move to Poxie. They'll have a beautiful home and maybe we can come and live there later.

334
00:37:20,360 --> 00:37:25,800
He'll send money because he's a rich Falang. All Falangs are rich. Filthy beyond description.

335
00:37:25,800 --> 00:37:30,600
Well, in L'Halle especially. We are. It's insane.

336
00:37:34,680 --> 00:37:39,880
That was probably their plan. And they hatched it pretty quickly. I don't know that they had,

337
00:37:39,880 --> 00:37:44,120
you know, planned this out two months before or six months before and they're just waiting for

338
00:37:44,120 --> 00:37:48,040
a gullible Falang to come along. I don't know. I don't know if they ever tried this before.

339
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I don't know. I had no idea.

340
00:37:59,800 --> 00:38:01,880
Then I got her off. Got her and the kid off.

341
00:38:04,680 --> 00:38:07,080
And the mother was a little teensy bit pissed.

342
00:38:09,080 --> 00:38:15,560
And I tried to console her. Like, you know, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I cannot. Cannot.

343
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I just cannot. There's just no way on this earth I can do this for you. For anybody. I can't do it.

344
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And I tried to give them some money. I don't remember how much. It was Laotian bills.

345
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I don't remember. I don't remember the equivalent of how much I was trying to give them. It was like

346
00:38:35,400 --> 00:38:38,280
probably 50 bucks. Something like that. US.

347
00:38:38,280 --> 00:38:42,680
Because I'm thinking, well, if they're this hard up where they're wanting to get rid of their

348
00:38:43,000 --> 00:38:48,440
family, maybe this will help them, you know, and then for a while they won't have to have this

349
00:38:48,440 --> 00:38:54,680
thought anymore. And maybe they can find some peace and stand together. That was my thought.

350
00:38:54,680 --> 00:39:02,360
They were thin. They were thin-ish people, but they certainly weren't starving. They were getting

351
00:39:02,360 --> 00:39:06,840
food somewhere. Somehow. There was a big river nearby. They're probably getting fish out of the

352
00:39:06,840 --> 00:39:12,600
river and fruit, you know. Jungle's full of fruit. You know, what you can eat and what will kill you.

353
00:39:14,840 --> 00:39:22,360
And I finally, I was thinking, well, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

354
00:39:22,360 --> 00:39:26,600
And I finally, you know, mother wouldn't take anything.

355
00:39:29,560 --> 00:39:34,200
I can't remember if I tried to give any to the girl. I might have. I can't remember if I did.

356
00:39:36,600 --> 00:39:40,680
She wouldn't have taken it. She was so shy. She was mortified with this whole experience.

357
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Just, it set her back. It was a horribly traumatic experience for her. Terrible experience for her.

358
00:39:47,320 --> 00:39:55,720
She's being rejected right there in front of her family. Jesus, it must have scarred her for life.

359
00:39:57,640 --> 00:40:00,920
She probably thinks about it to this day. Well, I'm pretty positive she does.

360
00:40:02,920 --> 00:40:09,160
That's so sad. I wonder if I went back there today to that same corner, if I could ever find it.

361
00:40:09,160 --> 00:40:15,240
Would she still have her stand there? A couple more kids, you know, from rogue

362
00:40:16,040 --> 00:40:20,040
Laotian guys who came around, fucked her once or twice, and made a baby and ran off. You know,

363
00:40:20,040 --> 00:40:23,720
that's what they do. All of Southeast Asia, that's what they do. They don't hang around.

364
00:40:27,880 --> 00:40:32,680
At any point, I finally got on the motorbike unencumbered and rode away.

365
00:40:32,680 --> 00:40:35,320
And that was a real black day.

366
00:40:38,600 --> 00:40:40,600
Stayed black the whole day.

367
00:40:45,640 --> 00:40:51,640
So those things are going to happen to you. You know, if you're sitting in your condo 24-7,

368
00:40:51,640 --> 00:40:58,200
you walk down to the bar with your drunken ex-pet, you know, you're going to be in a

369
00:40:58,200 --> 00:41:06,760
bar with your drunken ex-pet, sex-pet buddies, and you have a few beers and you guffaw and

370
00:41:06,760 --> 00:41:12,040
ticket bar grill somewhere, you're not going to have these adventures. If that was an adventure,

371
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I don't know what it was. I don't know how you turn, I don't know what the name is for the

372
00:41:15,960 --> 00:41:21,720
misfortune, maybe. I don't know. Experience, I guess. Certainly it was an experience.

373
00:41:21,720 --> 00:41:34,200
But if you didn't come to Southeast Asia to truly live in Southeast Asia, you're not ever going to

374
00:41:34,200 --> 00:41:40,280
have these experiences. You're not going to. You're going to have lots of stupid bar experiences and

375
00:41:40,280 --> 00:41:53,400
tourist destination experiences and stupid shit like that. Anyway, the end of that trip was,

376
00:41:55,160 --> 00:42:00,520
I finally ended up back in Poxi, turned in the motorbike, it kept running, it kept running,

377
00:42:00,520 --> 00:42:06,120
it kept running, it kept running, it kept running. There's no gas stations in that region. You

378
00:42:06,120 --> 00:42:17,560
crawl up to roadside stands. I don't know what the sign said in Laotian, but you see the whiskey

379
00:42:17,560 --> 00:42:21,560
bottles, you see the old whiskey bottles, they're on a rack usually, and you pull up there.

380
00:42:22,920 --> 00:42:27,000
And you try to guesstimate how many liters your tank might hold,

381
00:42:28,760 --> 00:42:33,960
and that's how many whiskey bottles you buy. And you dump them in, glug, glug, glug, glug, glug,

382
00:42:33,960 --> 00:42:37,160
glug, glug, glug, glug, glug, glug, glug, glug, glug, glug, glug. And then, you know, you think

383
00:42:37,160 --> 00:42:43,000
it'll take more, you put the next one in. If you buy the last one, and you only get a tenth of it

384
00:42:43,000 --> 00:42:46,760
in there before it's full, well, it didn't matter. You got to give it back to him, or you're going to

385
00:42:46,760 --> 00:42:54,280
get a refund, you know. The gas is so cheap, it didn't really matter. So that's how you get gas there.

386
00:42:56,840 --> 00:43:00,760
You can buy the bottles if you want to, and carry them extra, you know. Hope you don't crash.

387
00:43:00,760 --> 00:43:05,320
Tires are all bald, you know. Chains are

388
00:43:07,080 --> 00:43:13,560
loose, and sprockets are pointy, you know. They're just nasty things.

389
00:43:15,080 --> 00:43:19,800
I don't know what the hell I was doing out there. If one would have crapped, I couldn't even,

390
00:43:19,800 --> 00:43:25,880
there's no cell out there. I couldn't even call back to Poxy, to the renter, and say,

391
00:43:25,880 --> 00:43:30,680
hey, I'm broken down in the middle of nowhere. I'm fucked. You know, I would have probably just had to

392
00:43:30,680 --> 00:43:38,760
abandon it, and go back and buy a new one. Either that, or maybe find a tuk-tuk that had room.

393
00:43:38,760 --> 00:43:45,800
Anything that can fit in one of these passenger troop carriers, you can put in there. It doesn't matter.

394
00:43:45,800 --> 00:43:51,960
Here's another loud story that has haunted me all this time. It's a stupid story. It has nothing to do with girls.

395
00:43:53,960 --> 00:44:01,000
I was going somewhere, and I think it was maybe on the same highway to hell.

396
00:44:03,960 --> 00:44:07,400
And I was in a tuk-tuk. There were probably 50 people in there,

397
00:44:07,400 --> 00:44:15,800
almost full. I had been one of the first ones in, so I was way up by the cab. And we're waiting for

398
00:44:15,800 --> 00:44:19,560
everybody to shuffle around and load their shit, their chickens and their goats and their dogs and

399
00:44:19,560 --> 00:44:25,080
their kids and whatever the fuck, you know, anything that can fit. Big bags of shit, you had no idea

400
00:44:25,080 --> 00:44:31,880
what it was. Whatever. Because Poxy is a very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very,

401
00:44:31,880 --> 00:44:39,080
big bags of shit. You had no idea what it was. Whatever. Because Poxy is where they went to shop, you know.

402
00:44:41,080 --> 00:44:46,920
Yeah, it might be a hundred miles, but you know, to get those special things, you know, that's where

403
00:44:46,920 --> 00:44:53,560
you go. You go to Poxy. And so anyway, one of the last ones to load was this woman, older woman,

404
00:44:54,760 --> 00:45:01,240
and she came up to the back of the tuk-tuk, which is not really a tuk-tuk, but you know,

405
00:45:01,240 --> 00:45:07,560
we're just going to keep calling it that. What the fuck? It's probably a Laotian name, I don't know what it is.

406
00:45:09,960 --> 00:45:17,480
If she came up to the back and she had six black... what the fuck were they? Were they geese?

407
00:45:20,120 --> 00:45:26,360
I think they were ducks, but they were really, really tall ducks. Didn't look like a normal duck.

408
00:45:26,360 --> 00:45:33,880
They were really tall, like a mallard looking kind of a thing, but they didn't really look like a goose

409
00:45:33,880 --> 00:45:39,480
either. Maybe they were... I don't know what the hell. And anyway, they followed her. They were

410
00:45:39,480 --> 00:45:43,880
waddling, waddling across the parking lot, you know, and they stayed right with her like little

411
00:45:43,880 --> 00:45:56,520
healing dogs. And she got to the back of the tuk-tuk, and she took them... okay... and she

412
00:45:57,400 --> 00:46:01,720
moved them all together, so they're all facing each other. No, no, no, no, no, they weren't.

413
00:46:02,600 --> 00:46:09,800
They were all facing outward in a circle. How many? Well, I said six.

414
00:46:09,800 --> 00:46:16,040
Possible there was eight. No more than eight. And they pretty much just stood there, maybe they did...

415
00:46:17,560 --> 00:46:27,160
And she had a string, and she tied it around the necks of all together, like a stalk, like a bundle

416
00:46:27,160 --> 00:46:34,920
of flowers. And I thought, oh fuck, this is going to be ugly because they're going to panic, and

417
00:46:34,920 --> 00:46:38,760
they're going to go berserk and rub, and they're going to choke to death. And they were all

418
00:46:38,760 --> 00:46:44,520
berserk and rubbing and choking to death. This is really fucking bad, the way they treat animals.

419
00:46:44,520 --> 00:46:52,920
This is not very pretty. But they didn't panic, and she cinched it. It looked fairly tight to me.

420
00:46:54,440 --> 00:47:00,440
Tied or not? I thought, oh fuck, she's just choking to death, because she can't bring them on the

421
00:47:00,440 --> 00:47:04,520
tuk-tuk, have them running around, getting in everybody's face, and flying out the back,

422
00:47:04,520 --> 00:47:12,280
and shit like that. So what I supposed was she bought them in some market, got them to the tuk-tuk,

423
00:47:13,320 --> 00:47:18,920
and then she didn't want to carry them to the tuk-tuk, so she made them walk to the tuk-tuk,

424
00:47:18,920 --> 00:47:29,800
and then she bundled them and choked them to death. And that's it. Oh god. Well, you know, whatever.

425
00:47:29,800 --> 00:47:35,560
I mean, you know, the shit that I buy in the market has been killed also, you know, so I'll

426
00:47:35,560 --> 00:47:44,200
suck it up there. I spent most of my life hunting for food, you know. I just, it was just unexpected,

427
00:47:44,200 --> 00:47:51,320
I guess, to do that in the back of the tuk-tuk. And so then they're down for the count. They look

428
00:47:51,320 --> 00:47:57,480
like they did. And she grabbed the bundle, and she swung it up into the tuk-tuk, and shoved it under

429
00:47:57,480 --> 00:48:03,800
her bench seat, right at the back, pretty much at the back. And she had some other shit. I can't

430
00:48:03,800 --> 00:48:08,440
remember, maybe a cat or some fucking thing. I can't remember another animal or two, maybe a goat.

431
00:48:08,440 --> 00:48:18,520
There were some number of goats in there, and some dogs, and oh god, a fucking snake. Jesus Christ.

432
00:48:18,520 --> 00:48:31,640
And then we took off. Now where I was going was about nine hours. I was going like pretty much

433
00:48:31,640 --> 00:48:36,840
the end of the line. It's gonna be like nine hours. And I thought, well, you know, she's probably not

434
00:48:36,840 --> 00:48:41,880
going that far, because these turkeys, you know, it's a hundred and ninety-five hundred degrees.

435
00:48:43,480 --> 00:48:46,600
They're not gonna be really edible if she goes nine hours, you know.

436
00:48:46,600 --> 00:48:51,400
And we're trundling, trundling, trundling, and we would stop at certain places for a little break.

437
00:48:51,400 --> 00:48:55,480
Nobody got off, because they were afraid of getting their animals stolen, I guess. I don't know,

438
00:48:55,480 --> 00:49:02,920
losing their spot, I don't know, whatever. And these, as soon as we stopped at certain places, these

439
00:49:06,120 --> 00:49:14,760
Laotians would run, swarm the truck, and they had every kind of bits of critters you could imagine.

440
00:49:14,760 --> 00:49:21,320
And they had on their barbecued pieces, or sometimes whole, and they're on long sticks,

441
00:49:21,320 --> 00:49:25,400
and they would stand down below, and they would hold them way up, because you're sitting up pretty

442
00:49:25,400 --> 00:49:31,720
high, and they would hold them up so the people in the trucks could see what they're offering.

443
00:49:31,720 --> 00:49:38,680
And if a piece looked tasty, then you bargained for a price, and you paid, and then you pulled it

444
00:49:38,680 --> 00:49:44,680
off the stick, and then she had another stick with another piece, and she had another stick with

445
00:49:44,680 --> 00:49:52,280
head or some fucking thing on it, you know. Literally, seriously. Ears, or where the fuck,

446
00:49:52,280 --> 00:49:56,040
any goddamn part you could imagine, there was on sticks down there.

447
00:49:59,400 --> 00:50:04,280
And there's just dozens of these vendors, and some of them actually came up into,

448
00:50:06,040 --> 00:50:09,560
inside the tuk-tuk, and they're hopping around, they're trying to sell shit.

449
00:50:09,560 --> 00:50:15,800
And I bought a lot of that stuff. It was really good, it was tasty, you know. You don't know how

450
00:50:15,800 --> 00:50:19,400
it's been handled. Might have been in the sun for nine hours, you know.

451
00:50:22,200 --> 00:50:31,880
And so that's what the rest stops were like. If people needed to pee, they just stocked the truck

452
00:50:31,880 --> 00:50:36,920
wherever somebody needed to pee, and they jumped off, and they'd go literally 10 feet. They didn't

453
00:50:36,920 --> 00:50:40,280
want to go into the fucking jungle, you know. You got snakes, and you got landmines, so they're not

454
00:50:40,280 --> 00:50:43,720
going into the jungle. They're going to go 10 feet, and you're just going to sit there,

455
00:50:46,040 --> 00:50:52,280
you know, not supposed to watch them, but you know, the most interesting thing you've seen all day.

456
00:50:56,120 --> 00:51:01,160
And that's how those rides went. Anyway, we're going along, and we got to the point where

457
00:51:01,720 --> 00:51:05,240
that woman wasn't getting off. She wasn't getting off. She wasn't getting off, and I was starting

458
00:51:05,240 --> 00:51:13,240
to think, man, I think I can smell them. Oh, God, I think I can smell rotting duck,

459
00:51:13,240 --> 00:51:17,400
geese, goose, whatever the fuck they were. I was pretty sure I could smell them, and they were

460
00:51:17,400 --> 00:51:22,280
rotten in the sun. Well, they were kind of in the shade under the seat, but rotten in the heat.

461
00:51:24,280 --> 00:51:31,800
I was pretty sure I could smell them, and it weren't pretty. And I was thinking, what the hell

462
00:51:31,800 --> 00:51:37,080
is she going to do with these things? Because she clearly can't eat them now. Maybe she's got some

463
00:51:37,080 --> 00:51:45,160
dogs or some damn thing that would eat them. I don't know, but I know. And I saw her just

464
00:51:45,720 --> 00:51:49,960
watching her subconsciously. And I got to the point where about nine hours into the trip,

465
00:51:49,960 --> 00:51:56,040
over 30 minutes from my destination, finally she knocks, and they pull over, and she gets out.

466
00:51:56,040 --> 00:52:04,760
They pull over, and she gets out. I thought, okay, well, you know, she's going to sling them over her

467
00:52:04,760 --> 00:52:09,880
shoulder, and she had a bunch of other bags and shit. All kinds of crap. She'd been shopping,

468
00:52:09,880 --> 00:52:19,320
obviously. And there was no houses anywhere, not that anybody could see. And it was all nondescript.

469
00:52:19,320 --> 00:52:25,080
For miles and miles, it was the same country. It was the same. Everything looked exactly the same,

470
00:52:25,080 --> 00:52:33,000
but she knew exactly where to stop the truck. Precisely. And I swear the truck knew where to

471
00:52:33,000 --> 00:52:39,480
stop. So anyway, she gets out. She takes these duck looking things, and she slides them out the

472
00:52:39,480 --> 00:52:47,640
back, lets them flop onto the ground. And she starts arranging her stuff. And the truck stayed

473
00:52:47,640 --> 00:52:52,040
there for some minutes. I don't know, maybe there was other traffic or something. But anyway,

474
00:52:52,040 --> 00:52:59,400
he sat right there, so we could watch this whole thing unfold. And she reaches down to these ducks,

475
00:52:59,400 --> 00:53:02,600
and I thought, okay, she's going to pick them up, sling them over her shoulder. No, she didn't

476
00:53:03,560 --> 00:53:09,320
pick them up. She pulled a string, and instantly the rope around her neck came untied.

477
00:53:10,760 --> 00:53:16,440
And I thought, oh, that was fucking stupid. What the hell? Now you've got to hold each neck,

478
00:53:16,440 --> 00:53:22,680
you know? What the hell are you doing? Why'd you do that? Now they're going to be 10 times

479
00:53:22,680 --> 00:53:28,840
or six times harder to carry, you know? What the hell? And this is getting kind of interesting

480
00:53:28,840 --> 00:53:32,440
at this point. And then I'm thinking, where the hell is she going to go? There's no houses.

481
00:53:32,440 --> 00:53:44,520
There's no nothing. Nothing is out here. But she stood there, looked at them, and one by one,

482
00:53:44,520 --> 00:53:47,960
over the space of 15 seconds, they all came back to life.

483
00:53:51,640 --> 00:53:57,000
And they staggered up, stood up straight, looked around. Are we home?

484
00:54:04,600 --> 00:54:11,400
And she picked up her other bags, and she headed off the shoulder, headed for the jungle. And

485
00:54:11,400 --> 00:54:17,880
apparently there was some little trail there that I couldn't see. She pushed away a couple of big

486
00:54:17,880 --> 00:54:29,640
leaves and the black duck things were waddling along behind her. And she just disappeared into

487
00:54:29,640 --> 00:54:42,440
the jungle. And then the truck pulled away. And I thought, oh yeah, I ain't in Kansas anymore.

488
00:54:46,200 --> 00:54:54,120
So that kind of thing is every day. It's every day in Laos. It's... Laos is very, very fascinating

489
00:54:54,120 --> 00:55:06,680
in different ways from other countries. Yeah, I got other stories. I'll save them for later.

490
00:55:06,680 --> 00:55:10,200
I'm tired of Laos right now. Okay. So what do we got for...

491
00:55:12,600 --> 00:55:15,480
We're doing good on time, but I'm feeling tired and weak.

492
00:55:15,480 --> 00:55:28,440
Is there any short ones we can knock out here? Okay, we did that. There's a saying

493
00:55:31,400 --> 00:55:38,680
that we say all throughout Southeast Asia, for those guys, back to the girl subject, because

494
00:55:38,680 --> 00:55:44,680
that's... you know, somewhere around 90% of the audience of these things, that's all I want.

495
00:55:44,680 --> 00:55:47,080
I know those girls, they don't care about anything else they don't care about.

496
00:55:48,120 --> 00:55:50,760
Zombie ducks or anything else, they just want to know about the girls.

497
00:55:52,200 --> 00:55:59,080
We say, tie girls for fun. Pie girls for marriage.

498
00:56:05,560 --> 00:56:10,440
That's all I'm gonna say. We'll go through that again later. I can't explain it.

499
00:56:10,440 --> 00:56:12,520
I just don't have the energy to go anymore.

500
00:56:15,160 --> 00:56:22,120
Yeah, I just don't. I just don't. Okay, so we're gonna call it a day. This is gonna be really,

501
00:56:22,120 --> 00:56:29,720
really short. Man, we're not even an hour. It's gonna take me a while to get some strength there.

502
00:56:29,720 --> 00:56:40,600
Okay, so thank you. Very, very... oh wait, wait, wait. I don't think I did this. All tapes are

503
00:56:40,600 --> 00:56:48,200
copyrighted. 2023 by StockPhotosWorldwide.com. If you see these hosted on any other site, not

504
00:56:48,200 --> 00:56:54,680
an RSS feeder, but I mean somebody else's site, where they're calling it their content or whatever.

505
00:56:54,680 --> 00:56:58,600
Even if they're not calling their content, they cannot host it. They can link to it.

506
00:56:59,640 --> 00:57:05,720
Tell us through Twitter. Go to our Twitter link. Tell us. We will sue them. Done it before. We've

507
00:57:05,720 --> 00:57:14,760
got good awards before. We'll get them again. It's called copyright theft. And we know how to do it.

508
00:57:14,760 --> 00:57:21,880
We're good at it. We will send you one third or 33% of the total net.

509
00:57:21,880 --> 00:57:27,480
Proceeds. You gotta wait for it to settle. Usually, well, almost always they'll settle on a court

510
00:57:27,480 --> 00:57:32,040
because they know they're dead wrong. And they know if they go to court, it's just gonna add more shit

511
00:57:32,040 --> 00:57:41,800
to it. So... but sometimes they do that. Go to court. And the judge always awards more than...

512
00:57:41,800 --> 00:57:48,360
well, no, not always. They sometimes award more than we were asking for in damages.

513
00:57:48,360 --> 00:57:57,480
So 33% of that, you know, it's not uncommon at all to get 10 grand. I've known guys who got 30 grand.

514
00:57:59,080 --> 00:58:07,320
You can't steal stuff. Snowflakes. You can't do it. You gotta use your little noggin,

515
00:58:08,680 --> 00:58:13,720
your delicate little noggin, and you gotta think up your own content for your own website.

516
00:58:13,720 --> 00:58:23,880
A lot of people do a hot-licking thing where they make it look like content is hosted on their site.

517
00:58:23,880 --> 00:58:29,560
They just put a link to it on their site. But the content really is still hosted from our servers.

518
00:58:29,560 --> 00:58:38,440
But the link to it appears on their site like it's their content.

519
00:58:40,440 --> 00:58:49,240
That's a... you can sue for that, kind of, in certain circumstances. We have tended to let it go

520
00:58:49,240 --> 00:58:58,760
because we're still getting our content out there. They're still welcome to come to our site. We still

521
00:58:58,760 --> 00:59:08,280
get the copyright on the tape because they haven't altered the tape. So we've kind of looked the other

522
00:59:08,280 --> 00:59:14,200
way with that stuff. But if they actually take the first step, they're still going to have to

523
00:59:14,200 --> 00:59:20,040
do it on their server. So we've kind of looked the other way with that stuff. But if they actually

524
00:59:20,040 --> 00:59:27,720
take the file off of our server and put it on their server, we can and will nail them. If they

525
00:59:28,440 --> 00:59:34,120
alter the file such that our copyright is gone, then we're really fucking nail them. And those

526
00:59:34,120 --> 00:59:43,560
can be really big, big fines and awards. Really big. So if you see those, you get a third.

527
00:59:43,560 --> 00:59:48,280
And by God, I think by now you know we will send it. We will.

528
00:59:48,280 --> 01:00:11,240
Okay. So thank you very much and good evening and good night.