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SE Asia Chronicles Podcast Transcript #17

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Good afternoon from Southeast Asia. This will be episode or volume number 17 of

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the Southeast Asia Chronicle podcast Things. And they are designed to help you

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decide if you want to move, not vacation, but to move to Southeast Asia. If you do,

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can you afford it? And what are you gonna find when you get here? And not gonna be

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what you think. In just about every category it's not gonna be what you think.

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I've watched all kinds of fluffy politically correct podcasts on this

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subject. I never watched a single one before I came here about 11 years ago.

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But I've since watched a bunch of them to see how accurate I thought they were.

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And they were just nonsense. They're just fluffy, puffy, silly, frilly, millennial

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woke bullshit things. The exception is there's one guy down in Dhumagadi who

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makes some pretty good podcasts, but he only covers one country. And he doesn't

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go into nearly the detail that I would like to see. So that's why we're doing

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these whole differently. Excuse me. Okay, now I've been off for a while. Some

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noticed, some didn't care. I don't know. Whatever. I've been off for a while

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because I have been deathly ill. And that's identified and it's taken care of.

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And I'm gonna tell that story. Not because I like to whine about being sick, but

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because this is going to directly affect a whole bunch of expats. A whole bunch.

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Man, could I even say the majority? Maybe. Possibly. So I'm gonna tell this story in

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a little bit of a convoluted way, kind of a backwards way. And then at the end I'm

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gonna tell you what it is that might be affecting you that affected me. Okay, so

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for a little bit of time before I came to Southeast Asia, I had been getting sick

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occasionally. And I racked it up to food poisoning. You know, sometimes you go to

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Burger King, you know, whatever. And also to very bad diet. You know, pretty much

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100% junk food, candy, milkshakes, french fries. The worst possible shit on earth.

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My diet could not be any worse. If they were gonna do an experiment on somebody,

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see how long you can live eating this shit, you know, I would have been the

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guinea pig. So I would get sick occasionally. Not very often. Every couple

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of months, you know, something like that. Just not too sick for a day or two, you

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know. You go out for a meal, a different meal someplace, and in the morning you're

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pooping, you know, like that. Everybody has it occasionally, but you shouldn't have it

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every couple of months. So it got progressively worse. When I first went to

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Thailand, my diet was pretty good. I was eating mostly Thai food. Pretty good. My

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diet was better than it had been. And these problems went away. And I, you

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know, despicable me, you know, I didn't put it together really, especially at the

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time. But then after a couple years, after a couple years, they started to get worse.

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And my diet was slowly changing. I was going back to Western diets and, you know,

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ice cream every day and candy bars all day and you know, stupid shit like that.

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And I thought, well, okay, you know, yeah, I know this stuff isn't good for you. So

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what's it gonna do, you know? It's gonna take four days off my life. Well, who

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cares? But then one time, I got really stinking sick. Really sick. Now, food poisoning is a

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big thing all through Southeast Asia. You're gonna get it a lot. If you're out

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eating street food and restaurant food, you're gonna get food poisoning. That's

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all there is to it. You're gonna, you're gonna, period, it's a given, guaranteed.

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Okay, so this first time, I got really sick. I was down in bed for six, seven

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days, completely dehydrated, just circling the drain. And I finally said,

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okay, that's it. I'm done. You know, I gotta go into the hospital. Now, I had not

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been to the hospital since I was about 25 when a helicopter crashed on my head.

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And on that day, I got stitched up, went back to work the same day. So I do not go

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to hospitals. I don't. I don't do it. But this time in Thailand, and I really, really,

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really didn't want to go to a Thai hospital, but I had to go. I didn't have

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any choice. I was dying and I, nothing I could do was gonna recover me from, from

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whatever the hell it hit me. So I went in. I was in there about five days. They

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couldn't really find anything wrong. They went through a bunch of supportive

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therapy, billion, billion tests, really high-end hospital, really nice hospital,

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had good insurance, so they spared no test. And they just didn't really find

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anything wrong. And they suggested, well, this and that. You could try this, you can

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try that. Okay, whatever. Well, I'm better now. I want to go home. So I did. And about

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a month later, I got really, really sick again. Really sick again. And I thought,

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God, I gotta stop eating the street food, you know. I just, I, God, this is just

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killing me. I went in and this time I did test positive for E. coli and salmonella,

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both at the same time. So at least this time we had a cause, you know, food

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poisoning. Two different kinds. What are the odds of that? Ah, geez. So I was really sick.

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I was in there about another five days. Really? Oh my God. The pain was so bad

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they had me on morphine. And this is about the only complaint I ever had with

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Thai hospitals. The morphine IV has to be administered really slowly. Slowly, slowly.

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You know, you got that little plunger. You don't do that. You know, you really,

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really slowly. How you feeling? How you feeling? You okay? You okay? You know, it's

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gonna take a long time. The nurses in this hospital, really high-end hospital,

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they wouldn't do that. That was Bangkok Hospital. They would just shove it in and

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it immediately, instantly makes you projectile vomit. And I, after I learned

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this once or twice, I said slowly, slowly. I would even put my hand, you know, like

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slowly, slowly. No, they jam it in and projectile vomit every time. Anyway, so

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that's how bad it was. But they fixed me up. Supportive therapy. A bunch of abs.

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Went home. Felt fine. Went around. About three weeks later, went to McDonald's. And

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about six hours later, deathly ill. Just deathly ill. Now, I know a lot of people

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get sick every time they go to McDonald's. I primarily don't. I've never had a

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problem with McDonald's. It's like my staple food, you know. And this time I went in.

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No, no, no. Yeah, this time I went in and there was no diagnosis. Again, I tested

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negative for any kind of pathogen. Just sick as a dog. Sick as a dying dog. And

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they did supportive therapy. Okay, I did this nine times in a year. And finally, I got

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sick again. I thought, oh my god, this is just insane. I must be dying. You know, I'm

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slowly dying. And this time I laid in the bed for nine days. Completely

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dehydrated. And a weird thing was happening this time. I just got weaker

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and weaker and weaker. I got to the point where breathing was too much trouble.

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Like, I didn't care if I stopped. The weakness was profound. My bathroom door

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was just on the other side of my bed. I could not roll over the bed and then fall

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into the bathroom. I couldn't do that. I didn't have the strength to do that.

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Somebody had to like drag me to the bathroom and then help me stand up or

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into a crouching position and get me on the toilet. It's all strength I had. And I

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thought, well, this is weird. You know, this is unusual. And finally, after nine

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days, that's it. I'm done. Can't take it anymore. Stomach cramps like you couldn't

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believe.

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Geez, god, that was bad. And I went in and they discovered that I was bleeding to

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death internally. I got six units of blood. They said, had I waited a few more hours

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to come in, they might not have been able to pull me back. But this time they did,

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if I pronounce it correctly, endoscopy. Where they stick up tube down your throat.

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Now, in this hospital, this is Deluxe Hospital, they knock you out. Some places

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they don't. You don't want to do that. You want to get knocked out. You want to go night

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night. And then you wake up and you feel fine. And you don't know what happened.

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Kind of like that alien anal probe, you know. You don't know what happened. And

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you're much better off for it. So, I got the endoscopy and they did supportive

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therapy again. And they got me to the point where I could at least kind of sort

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of stand up. I was woozy and wobbly and man, I was in bad shape. But I went up

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for my final consultation before I left the hospital. I said, okay, what? What?

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What did I have? What did I have? And they said, well, you didn't have anything

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except this one thing. And I'm not gonna tell you what that is until I finish

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this story. Or am I? Yes, I am. I'll tell you now because that fits in the story.

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Okay. They showed me the actual pictures of the inside of my stomach. And it was

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ravaged beyond anything I could imagine. It was... I can't describe it. And they had

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never seen anything like it either. And I said, what the hell? What the hell? What

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the hell? That's, you know, I've done all kinds of operations on animals. I know

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what the inside of the stomach looks like. This ain't no normal inside of a

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stomach. What's going on? What's going on? You know, I thought, oh cancer. I thought

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I was just riddled with cancer. And the doctor sat back and he said, well, you

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know, we're trying to understand this. Do you by any chance take aspirin? I said,

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well, 20 years ago, 17 years ago, my doctor told me to go on the 81

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milligram maintenance dose for people getting older. Can maybe possibly ward

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off a stroke or heart attack? Maybe, you know. It's not gonna hurt anything. So

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why not take it? So I did for about 17, let's see, about 15 years. No, not even

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that. It was about 10 years, 11 years. So I took it faithfully every day. 81

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milligrams. Now, how many expats are on that? God, I'm bitten. If you're over 55

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of it, half of you are on that. 81 milligrams maintenance dose aspirin. Okay.

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Sucking hell. So that had eaten out the insides of my stomach. Just eaten it out.

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Just made it raw and bleeding. God. Okay. So I said, oh God, oh God, what do I do?

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What do I do? And they said, well, you know, that's really difficult to figure

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out. Stop taking aspirin. So I did. I never took another one. And that all kind

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of went away except it began to be replaced by this other thing. The other

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thing was acid reflux and indigestion and an acidy stomach. So, you know, that

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was better than leading to death internally, but still a problem. So I went

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back to the doctor, told him what's going on. He said, oh, here, here, take this.

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Omoprazole. Prilosec. It's a PPI, proton pump inhibitor. There's two kinds.

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Basically, one works, the other one doesn't. The Prilosec type does work.

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Stops acid. Period. Stops the acid. And I said, okay, well, why should I suddenly have

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to start taking this stuff? And he said, well, the aspirin destroyed so much of

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your stomach that your internal organs just aren't regulating acid like

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they're supposed to. And you're just way, way, way over producing. And I'm like,

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okay. And I said, well, how long should I take this? And he said, well, for life.

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Okay, well, in Thailand, they were really, really cheap. They're about, I don't know,

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probably a tenth the cost. They are elsewhere. Tenth the cost. Here's an

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example of the price discrepancies between Thailand and some other

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countries. A family member needed some weird cream. He had some little rash

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thing. And the doctor said, well, this is a particular kind of rash that if you

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don't do anything to it, it can eventually lead to cancer. And he's

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hypochondriac anyway. And he said, oh my god, oh my god, what do I do? And the

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doctor said, well, you need this really weird cream. And you go get that,

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you put it on there every day for, you know, a couple of months and it should be

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fine. It'll go away and it's done. You know, it's over. And so he went to fill a

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prescription. It was $601 for this teeny tiny little tube. It was like probably

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smaller than a tube of travel toothpaste. Tiny little tube. Six hundred, no,

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six hundred dollars and one cent. That's what it was. And he's like, oh damn,

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insurance wasn't going to cover it or something. And so he called me and said,

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hey, you know, I know stuff's cheaper down there. Can you get this stuff and how

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much is it? And I went to the pharmacy and checked on it. And they said, yeah,

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here it is. It was the same tube, same brand, same everything. Same. It was the

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stuff, quote unquote, the stuff. The actual stuff. Not a clone, not a copy. It was the

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actual stuff. And the Thailand price was, let's see, it was 25 baht. So I think that

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would have been 80, 90 cents. So I bought a couple of tubes and mailed it to him

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and everything was fine. That's the difference in American, well, Western

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prices. You don't understand how thoroughly you are being fucked up the

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butt by American pharmaceuticals. So anyway, price was sick. I just started

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taking it. And within a man, within 24, 48 hours, the acid was gone. Oh God, I felt

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like brand new. Felt like new. You take it just once a day. How many guys, how many

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expats are taking that crap? I bet a big percentage, I bet 20, 30 percent of you

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taking that crap. Okay. I took that for, well, altogether five years. I didn't like

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it. I didn't, I don't like to have to take anything. So I was always trying to

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wean myself off of it. And I would, I would get the capsules and I would each

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day I would open the capsule and instead of getting 20 milligrams, I would try to

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knock it down to about 15 or even 12 milligrams, you know, just empties a few

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of it, a little bit of contents up. If I didn't knock it down too much, that was

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okay. I got pretty much the same relief. If I knocked down too far, if I got down

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to 12, 13 milligrams, I started having acidity problems again. And then

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recently, last few months here, I've been so busy that I just didn't have the time

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to open every cap every day and try to measure out certain amount and I just

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popped the whole thing, just popped the whole 20 milligrams. Okay. Now

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recently, I've been getting sick again and I thought, well, it can't be the

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aspirin, you know, that's all healed up. The stomach actually healed itself

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except now the whole stomach biology was changed from the damage of the aspirin.

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But there was no more, you know, bleeding anything in the stomach. It was as good

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as it's gonna get. So getting sick again, I knew it wasn't from that and I just

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couldn't figure it out. I just couldn't figure it out. And I started reading. Now,

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I'm one of those guys who doesn't go to the doctor unless I can't figure

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something out because I've been misdiagnosed with so many things so many

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times that I don't trust them at all. It used to be that the number one cause of

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death in the US was doctor mistakes and that was until recently. Doctor mistakes.

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I don't trust them at all. I'm not gonna go there. That's a whole another podcast.

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But I finally learned that omoprazole or prilosec, and there's few other names for it,

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if you take it long term. Now, when you start taking this stuff, it always

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says, well you take it for 14 days, you know, then that's it. You're done. My

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doctor had told me take it forever. Take it for life. Just take it for the rest of

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your life. He's a doctor, you know. Doctors know. Sure, sure they do. Doctors are so smart.

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Okay, so if you take prilosec type medication for a while, even six months,

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it can and probably will set up a condition in your small intestines. They

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call it SIBO. S-I-B-O. You can Google it and there's gonna be a lot of you guys

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out there. Once you Google it, that's gonna explain some number of the

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symptoms you're having right now this minute. SIBO. What does that stand for?

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Small intestine bacterial overgrowth. Here's what happens, as I understand it.

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The prilosec kills off, just stops the flow of stomach acid. When that happens,

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the bad bacteria in your small intestine says, oh happy days, happy days. There's

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no more of that nasty acid to kill us. Now we can go crazy. We can live. We can

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live. And they flourish and they take over your small intestine. Let's take it

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to the next level. And when that happens, you got a whole bunch of bad shit coming

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your way, pun intended. It's gonna cause a cascade of effects. Most of them end in

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diarrhea. Okay, that's the end result of all these various things that are

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simultaneously trying to kill you. One of the things that happens is it makes the

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small intestine unable to absorb nutrients. So the small intestine kind of

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sort of looks at the food coming through and says, oh this is no good, no good, no

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good, no good. No, this one's no good. Just pass it, pass it, pass it. And it does. And so

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the nutrients don't get absorbed. And then your body's trying to get rid of

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this stuff that the small intestines has said is junk. And the body's saying, add

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water, add water to that stuff we wanted out of here. And you just poop it, poop it,

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poop it. Pretty much endlessly. So that's one of the things that can happen. You'll

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end up with several vitamin deficiencies that this will cause, B12, some other

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things. And then those will, and that those deficiencies will cause some other

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problems that you might be having. So bottom line is

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Prilosec is evil, pretty much. It's really good. It's really good for a 14-day

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regimen. You know, if you're trying to sort out some specific problem, God it's

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great. It's a miracle medicine. 14 days. A month or two maybe, if your doctor says to

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take it for the rest of your life, get another doctor. Because it's gonna screw

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you up. It's gonna screw you up just as bad as the aspirin did only in a

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different way. So how many of you guys are out there taking that 81 milligram

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baby aspirin maintenance dose of aspirin? Lots and lots and lots of you

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guys. The doctors don't prescribe it much anymore because now they're learning

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that this can happen. Slowly they're learning. Slowly.

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Doctors don't like to make rash decisions. So they wait until the

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evidence is absolutely overwhelming. And then they say, oh well maybe we should

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think about, you know, not ruining stomachs anymore maybe. What do you think

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there Bob? You know, well let's have a study on it, you know. And they'll go like

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that for years before they finally conclude, stop prescribing it.

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Oh geez. And it's the same with Prilosec. Now a lot of doctors will say two

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weeks, take it two weeks, that's it. Maybe a month, that's it. Then stop it. Get off.

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Even then, even then, if you take it for a month and you try to get off of it, it's

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like that alien creature in aliens, you know. It's got the guy

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around the throat. Well it's got a finger down his throat or something and then

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it's got some other fingers around his neck. And they do a little teensy tiny

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little cut on its knuckle to try to get it off. It goes like that, okay.

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Scares the hell out of everybody. Scared me really badly. Still does when I think about it.

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A source of nightmares. That's what it's gonna be like getting off of Prilosec.

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Because what happens is if you try to stop it cold turkey, oh f that, it's

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going to cause the acid production and consequently the acid reflux to come

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back in spades. Far worse than it was in the beginning. And so you're gonna go two,

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three, four days with that just constant burning and no amount of

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acids seems to help it. And you're just gonna say, oh f this, I gotta have

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more Prilosec and you're gonna go back on it. And then after a while you're gonna

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think, man this stuff is bad, this stuff is bad, I gotta get off of this. It

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doesn't cause any symptoms that you're aware of for some period of time. So

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you're thinking happy days. This really fixed my condition. I just keep taking it.

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You know, if you only got, you know, two years to live, hell take it. It'll make

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your life more comfortable. So there you go. That's my story and it's probably the

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story of lots and lots of guys listening. And that's kind of the sad state of

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affairs of modern medicine. Okay, so where did we leave off anyway? I don't

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know. Where were we? Okay, basically we were just talking random stories about

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girls. Unfortunately, girls are kind of the focal point of Thailand. Not so much

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other countries. To some degree, well to some degree all Southeast Asian

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countries. Not so much in Singapore, not so much in Hong Kong. They're kind of

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westernized where the girls are snotty. You know, they're just snotty bitches. Not

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all of them, but even if they want to talk to you, they won't because they're stuck

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up. Well, let them die alone being stuck up. I mean, I get it. You know, that just

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makes me happy to think that if they're so stuck. Just... God, okay. All the other

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Southeast Asian countries, it's about girls, but not to the absurd degree that

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it is in Thailand. So we're just doing random girl stories pretty much as things

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go along. We talked about... I've got this list of stuff here that people write in

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and say, talk about this, talk about this. Okay, I talk. And sometimes I'm lazy and I

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don't... Okay, let's get off the girl thing. Internet in Southeast Asia. If you are a

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digital warrior, you will nowadays get pretty decent internet in Thailand.

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You'll get much better internet in Cambodia. There is a reason for that. I'm

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not going to go into it now. Internet in Thailand is mostly acceptable. It's not

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going to be at the level it is in the US or Western country, but it's doable.

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You know, you can do it. It's okay. You get up in around Chiang Mai where it's

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all digital expats. I don't think... or digital warriors. I don't think there's

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any Thais left up there. Jeez. I was up there for a while and I had a flight out

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a few weeks later. I left way early. I just bought a new flight because I hated

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it so much. It was just... it was an American town with a little bit of a Thai

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flavor because it's been so taken over now by expats and sexpats. I just

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went to the airport, said get me a flight. Find me the first flight out of here.

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That's how disgusted I became with Chiang Mai. Lots of places all around

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Chiang Mai that are not like that, but Chiang Mai itself is like that for me.

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That was my assessment of it. Anyway, in Chiang Mai you're gonna get pretty

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decent internet because they're used to cranky Westerners demanding internet

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that works. I mean they think that's just absurd. Well, why can't you do it

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tomorrow or next week? Well, because I got deadlines. I got customers waiting. I have

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audiences waiting. No. Why can't you make it work? Why can't I wait till next week?

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Good God! I'm not waiting on a carrier pigeon here, you know. Internet, make it

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work. Well, I don't know. We'll try. We'll send out a technician, you know. Okay, now

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everybody on my block has the same problem. Something is out systemically.

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It's not gonna do you any fucking good whatsoever to send somebody to my condo.

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Well, you know, we'll send somebody sometime. And that can go on for weeks or months

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sometimes. We had an outage like that here in the Philippines not too long ago.

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It was so bad and it looked like it was so incurable that I canceled everything

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I've got. I canceled my online backups. I canceled Netflix. I canceled every

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recurring internet thing I had because I didn't think there was any way to ever

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get internet here. That was through a company called Globe Telecom right in

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BGC, which is the center of the richest, richy, snobbiest people on earth. And

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still they couldn't make their internet work and they wouldn't listen to what

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the problems were. Everybody around the whole neighborhood had the same problem.

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We had three devices. They had all had the same... Let's see, one, two, three. Yeah. They all

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had the same problem. And all they wanted to do is send a tech to look at my

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router. Well, you got a brain, right? You got a brain. You got a brain that's not

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gonna work, Paisano. But they went for weeks and weeks and weeks like this. And

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I actually made a website about it there. I put all... I transcribed all of their...

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all their chats onto it. And it's just like chatting with rabbits. I mean, it is

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truly like chatting with rabbits. Okay. So Philippines is one of the worst in all

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of Southeast Asia. Thailand is in the middle. They're not too bad. Cambodia

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used to be pretty darn good. Laos... That's truly the Shire. Laos the Shire. You know.

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So, yeah, you get a little bit. I remember up around Tetchikan, Alaska, the telecom

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companies, by some bizarre law, could only be run by local Indians. And how often

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did your phone work? It was the same in New Mexico, too. I lived on a bunch of

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different reservations in New Mexico. The local tribes had sole control over

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the telecoms. Phone worked half the time. Half the time. It's just... You know. Okay, you

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conclude whatever you want to conclude. Okay. So Singapore, first class. First

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class. Doesn't get any better. First class. Everything is gonna work. Every

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minute, every day. And if it doesn't, they're on it. They'll fix it. Now. Hong Kong,

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pretty much the same. Myanmar, hit or miss. It depends on, you know, how close the war

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is to you. Myanmar is a country of eternal civil unrest. There's reasons

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for that. You can study them. If you're a Falang, if you're a Westerner in Myanmar,

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probably you're not gonna have any trouble, you know. Don't get in between

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the two opposing forces, for God's sake. You know. But if you're just living your

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life, chances are you'll be left alone. Chances are pretty high you'll be left alone.

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You could be killed, you know. You gotta die sometime anyway.

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What the hell. Let's see. Oh, Vietnam. Vietnam is a little sketchy. Everything in

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Vietnam is sketchy. Everything in Vietnam is sketchy. Okay. It's a very peaceful,

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relaxed kind of place to live that people are pretty damn good. I mean,

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there's a crime. Like Saigon had pretty high crime. If you walk through a park

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in Saigon, any park, have good shoes on because you're gonna trip on needles.

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You are. You're not gonna walk 10 or 20 feet without snagging up a needle on

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your shoe. Okay. So they got big problems like that. I was in... okay, a couple of

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Saigon stories. I guess it's time for that. I was walking down a street with

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girlfriend. Kind of a rainy day. Saigon. And I caught some movement out of the

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corner of my eye. Maybe I told this story. I did. Just ignore it. Some kind of

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movement caught my attention. Corner of my eye. And I looked over and there was a guy

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in it, like a door well. And he was like lunging out from the door well. And I

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thought, oh what the hell? And I kind of jumped to the side. And he was on me. He

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anticipated I was gonna jump to the side. And he had jumped farther than he

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thought he was gonna have to jump because he thought I was gonna jump to

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the side. And he was just on me. He got both arms around my ankles. Hold them

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tight. And I danced around for a minute trying to kick him loose. And I couldn't

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kick him loose. He had an iron grip. And finally I went down. He's already on the

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ground. And I went down. Struggled around for a few minutes. And I don't think he

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expected me to fight as hard as I did. I kicked him in the face a few times.

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Trying to get him off. And finally that broke his grasp. And I got off and got

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back up. What the hell? What the fuck are you doing? You know, like that. Because I

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wasn't done. I wanted some blows to start going. And he said,

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English was very bad, but he said, I fixed shoe. I fixed shoe now. And he had a

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little box. He had a little carpenter's box with him. I said, what the hell are you

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talking about? What do you mean fix my shoe? My shoe is fine. And he said, no, look,

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look, look. And I looked down. There was a big slice on my shoe. He had had some

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kind of a little X-Acto knife. And he had sliced open my shoe. Right down near the

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sole. He said, I fixed shoe. I fixed shoe. And I sort of put together what had

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happened. I couldn't imagine that anybody would actually do that. But it

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just, you know, just because he had tackled me, meant he wasn't gonna get the

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contract to fix my shoe. So I'm like, go, go, go away. And we had a heated argument

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there for a minute. And then finally he just turned and in the door, well, all

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this time waiting, had been a Vietnamese cop, Saigon cop. And he motioned the cop

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over. And the cop said, you must pay him. Fix shoe. No, not gonna happen. Yes, we

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take you to jail. Okay, let's go. Now, let's go. Let's go to the jail now. We'll call

355
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the embassy. We'll try to get this on the international news. Come on, let's go.

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Well, why you don't pay him? Fix shoe. Because he's the one who cut it. Well, I

357
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never see him cut the shoe. What were you doing waiting there while we were wrestling

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on the ground in the ring on the wet sidewalk? What were you doing just

359
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standing there watching? You know, and it went on like that. And his English was

360
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enough that he could understand most of it. And finally I just turned with

361
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Griffin and walked away. I said, we're done. You want to shoot me in the back, shoot me

362
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in the back, arrest me, arrest me, do it now. Or we're leaving. And just turned around, walked

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away. And they didn't follow us. Now the twist on that up in Hanoi is that

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people have claimed, and I have trouble believing this, I really have trouble

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believing this one, people claim that they will do that. They'll tackle you to

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the ground and then they have some kind of acid or glue cutter or something that

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they pour onto your shoe and it instantly dissolves the glue in your

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shoe and instantly the seams come apart. Well, seams are usually stitched anyway

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except for the sole. I just, I can't imagine that anything you could pour, you

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know, in that seam between the sole and the shoe is gonna soak in there enough

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to instantly make the sole come off. I can't really grasp that, but I've heard

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that story a number of times. Maybe, I don't know. Some kind of alien super glue

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unsticker shit. I don't know what. But anyway, that's the common story up there.

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And they are far more aggressive in Hanoi. Because Hanoi is more communist

375
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than Saigon. I mean, communist is such a wonderful thing. Get around the world you

376
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little snowflake, woke motherfuckers and experience real communism and then go

377
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back to the US and tell people you want that. Fuck you, you stupid little twits.

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Fuck you up the ass, you stupid little fucking morons. Jesus, go get some life

379
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experiences before you're speltin' that goddamn stupid shit. Jesus Christ. Anyway,

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so, okay, I had that bad experience and it was only like the next day or a couple

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days later I'm walking down the sidewalk, whole another part of Saigon with

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girlfriend. And up ahead about half a block or so, I noticed that there's a

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huge congregation of really raucous Vietnamese guys, few girls, mostly guys.

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They were like frat boys and girls. And they were raucous. They were having some

385
00:41:20,880 --> 00:41:27,360
pushing and shoving matches and heated voices and it looked like, looked like

386
00:41:27,360 --> 00:41:33,840
just a gang, just a big gang, you know, probably fifty of them, I would guess, or

387
00:41:33,840 --> 00:41:38,320
fifty of them, a lot of them. And they're spilled out onto the sidewalk, a

388
00:41:38,320 --> 00:41:42,160
little bit into the street. And to go where we were going, we had to walk right

389
00:41:42,160 --> 00:41:47,760
through the middle of them. And I thought, oh man, geez, well this would be a lot of

390
00:41:47,760 --> 00:41:51,920
fun, wouldn't it? You know, a girlfriend can watch me get my ass caved, you know,

391
00:41:51,920 --> 00:41:58,400
that'd be a lot of fun. And I'm, there are probably times when I'll cross the street

392
00:41:58,400 --> 00:42:02,960
to avoid shit, usually I won't, and I didn't, and I just kept walking. And I got

393
00:42:02,960 --> 00:42:06,200
closer and closer and pretty soon they noticed I was coming and they're

394
00:42:06,200 --> 00:42:16,680
jumping around hooting all the more. I thought, well, this is gonna be memorable.

395
00:42:16,680 --> 00:42:21,960
I just hope I get to break a few sets of teeth before they take me out, you know,

396
00:42:21,960 --> 00:42:31,120
that's it. And we kept walking and we got right up to them. And they were

397
00:42:31,120 --> 00:42:36,720
blocking, I couldn't get through. And so I started to push through them, not with my

398
00:42:36,720 --> 00:42:41,400
hands, just with my body, just pushing through. And so now I'm in the middle of

399
00:42:41,400 --> 00:42:50,200
their group and they all crowded around. And I thought, okay, who's first? You know,

400
00:42:50,200 --> 00:42:59,240
who's first? Is it you? Is it you? And one of them took a, like a slurpee kind of a

401
00:42:59,240 --> 00:43:05,600
thing that he'd been drinking on and he shoved it into my hand. And I tried to

402
00:43:05,600 --> 00:43:11,480
refuse to take it. And a couple of them got to hold my arm, held it up. And right

403
00:43:11,480 --> 00:43:18,520
now we're at the point of just about fighting. I held my arm up, put it in my

404
00:43:18,520 --> 00:43:22,120
hand, and I thought, well, okay, I'll take it because then I can squeeze it into

405
00:43:22,120 --> 00:43:27,080
somebody's face, you know, that'll be a good first something, shock them.

406
00:43:27,080 --> 00:43:35,720
What the fuck? I'm not about to drink it. And so I took it and they patted me on the back and I

407
00:43:35,720 --> 00:43:40,520
said, okay, that's the prelude, you know, now somebody's gonna swing, probably from

408
00:43:40,520 --> 00:43:44,200
the side, probably gonna be a sucker punch from the temple, you know. Which one? You?

409
00:43:44,200 --> 00:43:50,720
You? Which one? And the one guy, the biggest guy, he put his hand on my

410
00:43:50,720 --> 00:43:57,360
shoulder and I'm just about to flick it off. You know what's coming, don't you?

411
00:43:57,360 --> 00:44:06,120
No, you don't. You think you do, but you don't. Because I didn't. And he says, sir,

412
00:44:06,120 --> 00:44:15,000
would it be okay, sir, could you sit with us for a few minutes, sir, and help us

413
00:44:15,000 --> 00:44:34,240
pronounce English? What do you do? What do you do? He said, sure, of course I can.

414
00:44:35,080 --> 00:44:40,400
Thank you for asking. And we sat down, we practiced a little while, went on our way,

415
00:44:40,400 --> 00:44:51,000
and I was their best bud forevermore. So before you're quick to judge Vietnam, take

416
00:44:51,000 --> 00:44:59,520
time. I had some amount of trouble with beggars, not overly aggressive. I had a

417
00:44:59,520 --> 00:45:03,200
little bit of trouble with American beggars. I don't know how the hell they

418
00:45:03,200 --> 00:45:06,840
got there. I suppose they were hanging around on overstays, just didn't have

419
00:45:06,840 --> 00:45:12,760
enough money to leave. They were clearly addicts, probably got into the

420
00:45:12,760 --> 00:45:20,040
easy access of heroin or something, and could probably never afford to leave.

421
00:45:20,040 --> 00:45:24,520
They just had to stay hidden until they died, you know, pretty much. Because if

422
00:45:24,520 --> 00:45:29,320
they get hit for overstay, they're gonna go in the joint. And it's a bad joint.

423
00:45:29,320 --> 00:45:35,320
And they're gonna stay there for a long time before they ship them out. And their

424
00:45:35,320 --> 00:45:38,400
habits gonna go to shit. And they're gonna go through withdrawals and they

425
00:45:38,400 --> 00:45:44,080
really, really don't want to get caught. So there are some small number of

426
00:45:44,080 --> 00:45:51,160
freaking expat junkies hanging around Saigon. I don't know about Hanoi,

427
00:45:51,160 --> 00:46:04,280
I never went up there. I found prices in Vietnam high. For most things.

428
00:46:04,280 --> 00:46:15,000
Okay, I think that's all we can do about that. Now,

429
00:46:17,000 --> 00:46:23,720
Internet in all around Southeast Asia. Okay, I think that's covered, right?

430
00:46:23,720 --> 00:46:31,920
If you got any more questions about that, write in. Okay, people think

431
00:46:31,920 --> 00:46:40,280
Singapore is much better. Is that true? Well, yeah, it's very much truer more,

432
00:46:40,280 --> 00:46:47,240
truer more from the standpoint of crime. You won't find any crime in Singapore

433
00:46:47,240 --> 00:46:51,640
because they'll kill you. They'll cane you until you're dead. You know, it's okay with me.

434
00:46:51,640 --> 00:46:57,560
I want to help them. I had one experience in Singapore. I was walking down the

435
00:46:57,560 --> 00:47:03,080
sidewalk. I hope I didn't already tell this. I was walking down the sidewalk, nice day.

436
00:47:03,080 --> 00:47:06,920
Little booth there on the sidewalk said ice cream. Oh, happy days. That's a good,

437
00:47:06,920 --> 00:47:13,280
oh yeah, I want ice cream right now. It's hot, you know, hot and rainy. So Singapore

438
00:47:13,280 --> 00:47:21,200
rains a lot, by the way. Oh, a little too much for me. Not all year, but an awful

439
00:47:21,200 --> 00:47:30,120
lot of the year. It's really rainy, jungly. A lot of English, though. Mostly English.

440
00:47:30,120 --> 00:47:34,560
Every once in a while, the population tries to start bastardizing the English

441
00:47:34,560 --> 00:47:36,840
and they get to the point where the English can't understand them and the

442
00:47:36,840 --> 00:47:44,560
government gets on them. No, no, we speak English in Singapore. And that kind of

443
00:47:44,560 --> 00:47:48,760
brings them back into line for a while and you know, like that. So I got an ice

444
00:47:48,760 --> 00:47:52,760
cream and I walked over literally three feet from this little to the side of

445
00:47:52,760 --> 00:47:56,760
this ice cream shop and I'm standing there. There was an ice cream cone, it was very

446
00:47:56,760 --> 00:48:03,640
cool. And I started to eat it and I got a third of the way done with it and some

447
00:48:03,640 --> 00:48:11,760
cop comes trotting over. And they said, no, eat ice cream, no, eat ice cream. What?

448
00:48:11,760 --> 00:48:20,480
I thought it was three feet. Look, look, look, I can touch it. I can touch the little

449
00:48:20,480 --> 00:48:24,840
shed thing. No, eat ice cream. And then they pointed to a sign that says you

450
00:48:24,840 --> 00:48:31,680
cannot eat ice cream in this space. Well, then where can you eat it? Because if I

451
00:48:31,680 --> 00:48:34,600
go any direction, I'm either going to go in the street or I'm going to go into

452
00:48:34,600 --> 00:48:41,520
the flow of pedestrians. This was the only space where nobody was walking. And

453
00:48:41,520 --> 00:48:46,440
I never did figure that one out. No eat ice cream, you know, so I didn't. I'm not going to get

454
00:48:46,440 --> 00:48:54,200
caned over ice cream. I just walked away. I think I ate it as I walked or something.

455
00:48:54,200 --> 00:48:59,440
I don't know what the hell. So Singapore's got a lot of stuff like that.

456
00:48:59,440 --> 00:49:10,560
Ah, they're star-wicked. And the end result is it makes it a very lovely place to live.

457
00:49:10,560 --> 00:49:18,000
But not so much of a lovely place to enjoy life unless you just want to walk

458
00:49:18,000 --> 00:49:24,440
around and worry about where you can eat your ice cream. You know, if you're in the

459
00:49:24,440 --> 00:49:29,640
corporate structure and your main concern is getting to work and working

460
00:49:29,640 --> 00:49:36,520
and getting home, going to a movie, that's going to be a delightful experience. You're not

461
00:49:36,520 --> 00:49:40,560
going to have a screaming gang banger pieces of fucking shit in theaters. You're not

462
00:49:40,560 --> 00:49:45,560
going to have it. It won't happen. And if it did happen, they're out and they're going to get caned.

463
00:49:45,560 --> 00:49:52,360
You know, probably the ushers are authorized to do it. I don't know.

464
00:49:52,360 --> 00:50:07,360
Cambodia. No, we've been there. Okay. Oh, here's a Thailand story.

465
00:50:07,360 --> 00:50:18,120
God, I hope I didn't also tell this one. I think I did. The Russians in Thailand fed the fish.

466
00:50:18,120 --> 00:50:25,000
They went to a little stall next to the beach and they bought some fish food for five bucks.

467
00:50:25,000 --> 00:50:31,640
Walked 20 feet across the promenade and threw it in the water for the fish and the fish came.

468
00:50:31,640 --> 00:50:39,240
Well, thank you, thank you. And they got arrested and fined someone godly fine. Huge amount of money

469
00:50:39,240 --> 00:50:46,880
for feeding the fish because you're not supposed to because somebody has determined that in some

470
00:50:46,880 --> 00:50:56,320
microscopic way it harms any coral reefs that might possibly be in the region, you know. Okay,

471
00:50:56,320 --> 00:51:02,160
that's the craziness of Thailand. Okay, if you're not going to allow people to feed the fish,

472
00:51:02,160 --> 00:51:08,600
don't allow a goddamn fish feeding stand 20 feet away from where the fish are. You know,

473
00:51:08,600 --> 00:51:17,160
that's kind of a no-brainer. All right. And I talked about the guy who left a bad review for

474
00:51:17,160 --> 00:51:24,960
the resort he was in, American guy. Went to jail. Went to jail for leaving a bad review on something

475
00:51:24,960 --> 00:51:38,960
like Expedia or something. Crazy people. Oh, there's that story right there. Somebody want to know about that?

476
00:51:40,240 --> 00:51:46,000
Yeah, okay. And this is why if you start researching Thailand

477
00:51:49,840 --> 00:51:53,440
and you want to know what other people think, you're only going to see the glowing reviews,

478
00:51:53,440 --> 00:52:00,400
because what will happen is somebody leaves a bad review in that hotel or restaurant or whatever.

479
00:52:01,360 --> 00:52:06,000
If they have the wherewithal, they'll get a hold of the site hosting the review, whether it's Expedia

480
00:52:06,000 --> 00:52:12,720
or, you know, any place. And they'll say, hey, you got a bad review on that, either take it down or

481
00:52:13,360 --> 00:52:19,520
we're going to cut off your access to Thailand. Well, Thailand is a huge tourist destination, so

482
00:52:19,520 --> 00:52:23,520
they don't want to lose the revenue of people booking stuff in Thailand. So, just take down the

483
00:52:23,520 --> 00:52:28,400
bad review. So, even in America, they can reach out and touch you even in America. So, you're going to

484
00:52:28,400 --> 00:52:38,000
get a vastly distorted view of businesses and things, especially touristy things in Thailand,

485
00:52:38,000 --> 00:52:46,320
vastly distorted. You're going to see everything's all milk and cream and honey and peachy keen and

486
00:52:46,320 --> 00:52:55,840
it's not even remotely close. Okay, so

487
00:52:58,880 --> 00:53:05,680
you got to keep asking yourself as we go through these, are you really escaping the matrix?

488
00:53:08,640 --> 00:53:13,440
And I'm going to keep asking that again and again, are you really escaping the matrix by going to

489
00:53:13,440 --> 00:53:22,240
anywhere in Southeast Asia? Well, the answer is the same every time. In some ways you are,

490
00:53:22,240 --> 00:53:27,360
some ways you're not. You're leaving part of the matrix behind, but you're getting into a whole new

491
00:53:27,360 --> 00:53:34,880
matrix by going to another place. Maybe that new matrix will be easier for you to choke down.

492
00:53:35,920 --> 00:53:42,080
For lots of people it is, for me it is. For lots of people it is, for some it is not. Some people

493
00:53:42,080 --> 00:53:49,520
cannot cut Southeast Asia. They cannot. Who are those people? Okay, this is really good advice here.

494
00:53:50,240 --> 00:53:56,160
If you are anal retentive, don't fucking go. Do not fucking go. Just don't go. Probably not even for

495
00:53:56,160 --> 00:54:05,120
vacation. A week, not two weeks, a week. Take somebody with you who has a calming effect on you,

496
00:54:05,120 --> 00:54:15,680
because you're going to get pissed. And getting pissed in Southeast Asia is not allowable. Maybe in Cambodia.

497
00:54:23,200 --> 00:54:29,920
If you're anal retentive, if you are crotchety, angry, angry issues,

498
00:54:29,920 --> 00:54:34,720
don't go. Just save you and them a lot of trouble. Just don't go, because that's not the place for it.

499
00:54:34,720 --> 00:54:41,440
They'll eat you alive. Americans, Westerners are used to being able to voice their opinions and

500
00:54:42,000 --> 00:54:49,440
calling foul when they see a foul, and calling bullshit when they see bullshit loudly, publicly.

501
00:54:49,440 --> 00:54:57,360
No, no, no. Not Southeast Asia. No, no, no. Some countries are worse. Thailand is probably the worst.

502
00:54:58,800 --> 00:55:05,040
You do not raise your voice. You do not. You do not raise your voice, because if you do, you've lost.

503
00:55:05,600 --> 00:55:11,040
Whatever the argument is, you just lost it. And then whoever's watching, the police, whatever,

504
00:55:11,040 --> 00:55:18,000
whoever's watching, you're going to lose. You're going to lose. You're going to lose. You're going to lose.

505
00:55:18,000 --> 00:55:27,280
Whatever whoever's watching. Now you are theirs by raising your voice. That means you are uncouth,

506
00:55:28,480 --> 00:55:35,360
uneducated. You come from the province. You're low class. You raise your voice. You're calm.

507
00:55:35,920 --> 00:55:39,760
No matter what, if they're going to stop you on the sidewalk,

508
00:55:39,760 --> 00:55:46,160
and the cops run over to you, and they shove two bags of cocaine in your pocket,

509
00:55:49,200 --> 00:55:54,320
and then they arrest you for possession of cocaine, you do not raise your voice.

510
00:55:55,280 --> 00:55:58,880
You sort it out later, because if you raise your voice, it's going to make it far worse.

511
00:55:59,680 --> 00:56:02,960
You get in front of the judge and the cops will say, well, he was rude and abusive, and he was

512
00:56:02,960 --> 00:56:10,720
yelling, guilty. And that's it. That's it. It doesn't depend on evidence.

513
00:56:12,400 --> 00:56:15,200
Not in Southeast Asia. Singapore, yes. Hong Kong.

514
00:56:16,640 --> 00:56:23,040
Well, Hong Kong was surely straight before the Chinese stole it. Now it's just, well, it's Chinese.

515
00:56:23,040 --> 00:56:32,000
So, okay. Oh, and here we go. People want to know about the Chinese. Okay. Fucking Jesus Christ.

516
00:56:33,440 --> 00:56:36,960
I've been regretting I've left this one on here for a while, because I didn't want to do it.

517
00:56:40,320 --> 00:56:45,040
Now everybody knows that the ties came originally from China. I can't remember what region they

518
00:56:45,040 --> 00:56:54,000
figured they originally came from. I can't even remember. 800,000 years ago, something may

519
00:56:54,000 --> 00:57:00,880
meander down into Thailand. So the Chinese are, I mean, the ties are Chinese. Oh, don't tell them

520
00:57:00,880 --> 00:57:06,160
that. Oh, God. Fucking no. They hate the mainland Chinese. And if you tell them they're Chinese,

521
00:57:06,720 --> 00:57:09,840
they'll slap you. No, I mean they'll slap you, because they know that's bullshit.

522
00:57:09,840 --> 00:57:15,120
They'll slap you. Even if you tell it as a joke, they'll slap you. Because they don't want to be

523
00:57:15,120 --> 00:57:20,320
Chinese. Nobody wants to be Chinese. I don't know of any country in Southeast Asia that likes the

524
00:57:20,320 --> 00:57:24,560
Chinese with the possible exception of Cambodia, because they are predominantly Chinese, I think.

525
00:57:25,680 --> 00:57:26,560
Oh, Vietnam.

526
00:57:35,120 --> 00:57:36,800
Yeah, they'll go crazy at that one.

527
00:57:36,800 --> 00:57:45,440
The Chinese are pretty prevalent in Thailand. Now I find a distinct difference

528
00:57:46,400 --> 00:57:53,040
in two kinds of Chinese in Thailand. One is the Chinese that were probably born in Thailand.

529
00:57:53,040 --> 00:57:57,440
Their parents came directly from China, but they're born in Thailand, and they were raised in

530
00:57:57,440 --> 00:58:06,960
Thailand with Thai ways and Thai customs. And then there are the mainlanders who come down in midlife

531
00:58:06,960 --> 00:58:17,520
to settle their vacation there. Both of those are pretty bad class of people. The ones who were born

532
00:58:17,520 --> 00:58:25,120
in Thailand just happen to be Chinese. They, they were born in Thailand, but they were raised in

533
00:58:25,120 --> 00:58:32,240
Thailand, just happen to be Chinese. They seem to be pretty decent people, not always, but

534
00:58:33,520 --> 00:58:40,560
that's a pretty good mix. I have, well, I have two, actually. I have two good Chinese friends

535
00:58:42,640 --> 00:58:47,600
in Thailand. They were both good to me in every business dealing we did. They were

536
00:58:48,320 --> 00:58:53,120
exactly, perfectly good. If there was a problem, they straightened it out

537
00:58:53,120 --> 00:59:05,120
up, cheerfully. They can be a little dishonest, you know, if they think they can get away with

538
00:59:05,120 --> 00:59:10,160
it, but if they can't get away with it, then they fix it, fix it. Because they do have some latent

539
00:59:10,160 --> 00:59:16,800
sense of honor. Not like the Chinese, like the mainland Chinese who have zero concept of the

540
00:59:16,800 --> 00:59:23,600
concept of honor. Zero. They don't have any. Doesn't exist. They don't know what it is.

541
00:59:23,600 --> 00:59:33,120
They were taught centuries ago that working was good, and then it, the concept came up that working

542
00:59:33,120 --> 00:59:38,880
smart was better. And that concept got morphed into the idea that, well, you know,

543
00:59:38,880 --> 00:59:47,120
stealing was just kind of an example of working smart. Because the people who steal very often

544
00:59:47,120 --> 00:59:53,760
get away with it, so they get ahead in life. So that's working smart. They were smart to do that,

545
00:59:53,760 --> 01:00:02,320
because they got ahead, and that's all that matters. They have no inbred sense of honor at all.

546
01:00:02,320 --> 01:00:11,440
At all. That's why they've stolen every single American invention, and they copy it mercilessly

547
01:00:11,440 --> 01:00:27,520
all day, every day. God. The Chinese are the most annoying people I've ever encountered anywhere in

548
01:00:27,520 --> 01:00:32,720
the world. Now, I said at the beginning of these, I said the Brits in Thailand were the most annoying.

549
01:00:32,720 --> 01:00:37,600
Well, they are in the sense that they're the ones that are going to be in your face.

550
01:00:38,560 --> 01:00:44,720
So you're going to see them more. And they're going to be annoying directly to your face.

551
01:00:46,800 --> 01:00:51,760
They're not going to back it up and get ready to smack them in the fucking teeth. They'll run.

552
01:00:51,760 --> 01:00:56,960
But they're going to be mouthy as hell right up to the point you smack them in the teeth.

553
01:01:00,000 --> 01:01:10,000
God. The Chinese are sneakily annoying. And sometimes not so sneakily. I...

554
01:01:12,000 --> 01:01:18,000
God. One of their tricks is to... They come to you and they're like,

555
01:01:18,000 --> 01:01:26,320
one of their tricks is to... They come down in caravans of buses. I've seen like 100, 120 buses

556
01:01:26,320 --> 01:01:35,920
at a time coming in a caravan down from China into even central, sometimes southern Thailand. Long,

557
01:01:35,920 --> 01:01:43,920
long, long, long ride. And they get off the buses and it's like opening the door and all the ping

558
01:01:43,920 --> 01:01:52,240
pong balls bounce out into the wind. They used to stick strictly in orderly little groups.

559
01:01:53,120 --> 01:01:57,200
And the tour guides would lead them around. Look at this. Look at this. Okay. Now we eat here.

560
01:01:57,200 --> 01:02:00,720
You know. And then they weren't too much of a problem then. But then they changed their

561
01:02:00,720 --> 01:02:04,160
policy. They just started letting them run loose. I suspect the Chinese demanded it.

562
01:02:04,160 --> 01:02:13,680
And they just run loose. And they run out of scalters through the towns. And they fill up

563
01:02:13,680 --> 01:02:20,480
every shot. They will fill up to 7-elevens until you can't even get in the door.

564
01:02:22,480 --> 01:02:26,480
Can't even get in the door. There'd be a queue outside to get in 7-eleven. Because it's full.

565
01:02:26,480 --> 01:02:32,160
Physically you cannot fit another person in there. And they're just looking at stuff. They don't buy

566
01:02:32,160 --> 01:02:38,080
anything. Maybe a pack of gum. Because they don't have any money. They don't buy anything. They're

567
01:02:38,080 --> 01:02:45,280
just looking. And if they do buy a pack of gum, they're going to argue over the price. Seriously,

568
01:02:45,280 --> 01:02:51,280
I have personally watched them argue or try to barter on the price of a pack of gum.

569
01:02:51,280 --> 01:03:02,560
A pack of gum. Jesus. If you do get into the store, and let's say you need to get to the milk.

570
01:03:03,600 --> 01:03:11,120
Don't even. I used to waste time by saying, excuse me, pardon, pardon. And I'd sort of tap

571
01:03:11,120 --> 01:03:16,400
them on the shoulder. You know. I said, look, I need to go to the milk. And they just give you

572
01:03:16,400 --> 01:03:23,440
the deer in headlights stare. They have no clue what you want or why. And I got to the point where

573
01:03:25,680 --> 01:03:33,600
after years, I would just say move. And if they didn't, I moved them. It's cattle. It's cattle.

574
01:03:39,600 --> 01:03:43,120
They will go into the restaurants. They were never designed for karaoke. They'll bring their

575
01:03:43,120 --> 01:03:49,280
own equipment. Maybe it's in the middle of rush hour and they'll set up karaoke speakers.

576
01:03:52,320 --> 01:03:55,600
And the staff sees what they're doing. They'll run over and say, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,

577
01:03:55,600 --> 01:04:04,880
my, my, my karaoke. They say cali okey. My cali okey. And the Chinese just brush them off.

578
01:04:05,520 --> 01:04:09,280
They just brush them off. Maybe they've ordered a little bit of food, but a bunch of alcohol.

579
01:04:09,280 --> 01:04:15,680
And it's now going to be a karaoke bar instead of a nice restaurant. And I've seen them clear out

580
01:04:15,680 --> 01:04:21,440
nice restaurants and I've left in a horrible times because they'll start cranking out the stupid

581
01:04:21,440 --> 01:04:27,200
Chinese karaoke dancing and shouting and screaming. And I guess that's singing. I don't know.

582
01:04:28,960 --> 01:04:33,440
The staff is trying to get them out, trying to get them out. If the staff pushes too hard,

583
01:04:33,440 --> 01:04:38,400
the Chinese will go berserk and they'll start overturning tables, throwing dishes and

584
01:04:38,400 --> 01:04:44,400
pushing the staff around and go right back to the karaoke. I've seen that over and over.

585
01:04:46,720 --> 01:04:57,120
Over and over. They go into the malls. Now the malls in Thailand are nice. Nicer than almost any mall

586
01:04:57,120 --> 01:05:04,240
I've ever seen in America. Nice. Really nice malls. I don't know why because nobody has any money to

587
01:05:04,240 --> 01:05:11,200
buy anything. But the Thai just go in all the Southeast Asians. They go in for the air conditioning.

588
01:05:11,200 --> 01:05:18,640
They don't plan to buy anything. They just like to shop and look because that gets them air

589
01:05:18,640 --> 01:05:26,400
conditioning. In the room they don't have air conditioning. So they go in the malls. In the

590
01:05:26,400 --> 01:05:31,360
restaurants that they could afford, they don't have air conditioning. And they can't sit there all day

591
01:05:31,360 --> 01:05:36,080
without buying stuff. So they go into the malls where they don't have to buy anything. So the

592
01:05:36,080 --> 01:05:41,680
malls are full. Very, very few sales. But the Chinese will come in and they don't plan to buy

593
01:05:41,680 --> 01:05:57,600
anything either. And they might be literally 20 feet from... Get ready for this one. I've seen this

594
01:05:57,600 --> 01:06:03,360
more times than I can count. They might be 20 feet from the big sign that says restrooms. You know,

595
01:06:03,360 --> 01:06:15,200
little man and woman. And the kids are the adults. The males are the females. Right there in the center

596
01:06:15,200 --> 01:06:24,000
of the big marble aisles with throngs of people trying to get through. They just pull their pants

597
01:06:24,000 --> 01:06:36,640
down or pull the dress up and... shit! Now you're thinking, no, that can't... No, no, no, that

598
01:06:36,640 --> 01:06:47,360
no, that cannot happen. Okay, I suppose you can go Google it. I don't know. They just shit. And it

599
01:06:47,360 --> 01:06:52,000
reeks. And the people are taking selfies. The ties are taking selfies and people are screaming at

600
01:06:52,000 --> 01:06:56,560
them. And the Chinese are giving them the finger, fuck you, fuck you. They learn, fuck you. That's

601
01:06:56,560 --> 01:07:06,240
all they know. And shit. They take their time. And maybe they wipe. Maybe they don't. And of course,

602
01:07:06,240 --> 01:07:16,160
when they shit, they pee. And the pee streams across the marble aisles. It can block off three

603
01:07:16,160 --> 01:07:27,200
quarters of an aisle. And the guards don't seem to do a goddamn thing. You know, they'll send a

604
01:07:27,200 --> 01:07:34,080
cleanup crew to clean it up. But nothing ever happens to the Chinese. Nothing ever happens to

605
01:07:34,080 --> 01:07:38,960
them. The ties think they're making big money on the Chinese so they don't want to piss them off,

606
01:07:38,960 --> 01:07:42,960
but they're not making a diddly squat off the Chinese. If the Chinese are going to spend money

607
01:07:42,960 --> 01:07:52,000
anywhere, they only spend it in Chinese owned stores. Period. So everybody's afraid to offend

608
01:07:52,000 --> 01:08:00,000
the Chinese. Everybody hates their guts. One of my girlfriends worked in a tie clothing store.

609
01:08:02,400 --> 01:08:09,360
And occasionally ties would come in and steal stuff or try to steal stuff.

610
01:08:09,360 --> 01:08:12,880
Very occasionally some stupid Falang would come in and try to steal something.

611
01:08:15,360 --> 01:08:16,480
That would happen maybe

612
01:08:19,440 --> 01:08:23,200
every three to five months. Not even that. Probably once every six months

613
01:08:23,840 --> 01:08:29,040
that a Falang would try to steal something. The ties would try to steal something probably

614
01:08:29,040 --> 01:08:36,560
once or twice a month. The Chinese would try to steal something one to four times a month.

615
01:08:36,560 --> 01:08:42,240
Something one to five times a day.

616
01:08:45,680 --> 01:08:48,800
And often enough they got away with it and it made them hard to stay in business.

617
01:08:48,800 --> 01:08:50,720
Made it hard for them to stay in business.

618
01:08:54,800 --> 01:09:01,760
You can google this one. There was a flight going from Bangkok to, I think they were headed for

619
01:09:01,760 --> 01:09:09,600
Beijing. Not sure. Around the tarmac at Soar, and a boom in Bangkok. And they got tired of waiting.

620
01:09:10,320 --> 01:09:13,520
A little bit of a flight delay or maybe there wasn't even a flight delay. I don't know.

621
01:09:14,960 --> 01:09:20,640
So they all popped open the emergency exits and went outside, sat on the wings and laid out their

622
01:09:20,640 --> 01:09:27,280
lunches. They all got arrested but they were incensed. Why would you arrest us? Why? Why?

623
01:09:27,280 --> 01:09:32,880
Why? You are a racist! Well, I wasn't before but I am now.

624
01:09:36,560 --> 01:09:45,360
That's what the Chinese do everywhere they go. I was sitting in a casino in

625
01:09:45,360 --> 01:09:57,040
Phnom Penh. And I was in the, what do you call it, the, oh my brain is really good. The antibiotics

626
01:09:57,040 --> 01:10:04,480
really make you foggy headed. God, a place where you go in and you can eat whatever's there. What a

627
01:10:04,480 --> 01:10:12,160
hell is it? It's all remembered in me. Jesus Christ! I was in a big one of those anyway. Really,

628
01:10:12,160 --> 01:10:20,640
really big one. Probably 40, probably 40 tables. Something like that. Big tables. Each table could

629
01:10:20,640 --> 01:10:31,520
seat probably eight people. From four to eight people. Okay. And we're sitting there. There was

630
01:10:31,520 --> 01:10:37,200
one Chinese guy sitting at a table about five tables from us. And then there was us, a couple of

631
01:10:37,200 --> 01:10:42,960
us. That's it. That's all it was. So we went, we paid our money. And then you go in and you can eat

632
01:10:42,960 --> 01:10:49,920
whatever. Whatever you want. For as long as you want. And so we were. We were chowing down.

633
01:10:50,640 --> 01:10:57,840
Shrimp. Every kind of good thing is good food. And we're about halfway through this meal and

634
01:10:57,840 --> 01:11:04,160
this Chinese woman comes and she pays her money. And she comes in and she looks around at all the

635
01:11:04,160 --> 01:11:13,280
food on the racks, you know, on ice and everything. And then she comes over to our table and she sits

636
01:11:13,280 --> 01:11:25,440
down. We had a table for four. She sat down. Took her third chair. And she just started eating off

637
01:11:25,440 --> 01:11:35,840
our plates. And I was just ready to backhand her. And I thought, no, no, wait a minute. This is,

638
01:11:36,640 --> 01:11:41,120
this is funny in other countries. You know, let's see what the hell's going to happen here.

639
01:11:42,240 --> 01:11:49,360
My girlfriend was just apoplectic. She wanted a cider. And she's a, I don't know, 35, 38 year old

640
01:11:49,360 --> 01:11:56,560
Chinese woman. So we just watched her. Cause you know, we can go get more food. Doesn't matter.

641
01:11:58,480 --> 01:12:03,520
We wanted to see what the hell. Couple of times we tried to talk to her, you know, no speak English,

642
01:12:03,520 --> 01:12:14,160
no speak a Thai. And she ate all the good stuff off of my plate and picked the really good stuff

643
01:12:14,160 --> 01:12:21,200
off a girlfriend's plate. And then when she had gotten all the good stuff, she went back to my

644
01:12:21,200 --> 01:12:29,600
prawn tails and one by one started eating those. Crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch them up and swallow

645
01:12:29,600 --> 01:12:39,760
them down. And she ate every prawn tail. And I kept saying, look, you, you, you, you, you go there,

646
01:12:39,760 --> 01:12:45,200
you get all you want. You know, you get you, you, you, you, you, you get more. You get more there.

647
01:12:45,200 --> 01:12:51,920
That's free, free. You already pay, you know, you, she didn't, she could not grasp the concept.

648
01:12:51,920 --> 01:12:54,800
And I, and I tried it quite a few times. I would get the attention of the,

649
01:12:56,000 --> 01:13:03,680
of the staff and say, um, you know, look, look, she, look, we want you to go, go, go. And they

650
01:13:03,680 --> 01:13:10,720
would just look at me, you know, like, well, what's the problem, you know, cause they're Chinese.

651
01:13:10,720 --> 01:13:14,400
And we let her finish everything. And then she wanted off and then we got fresh new plates.

652
01:13:15,920 --> 01:13:22,800
And, uh, and we moved the extra chairs away from our table so she couldn't sit there again. I

653
01:13:22,800 --> 01:13:27,120
surprised she didn't come and drag one up, back up to our table. And then she went over the Chinese

654
01:13:27,120 --> 01:13:34,400
guy's table and he just barked at her. He, he, he's Chinese so he could tell her to fuck off in

655
01:13:34,400 --> 01:13:43,840
Chinese. You know, and she did that exactly that kind of thing as the experience that you're going

656
01:13:43,840 --> 01:13:54,240
to have. How many times a day between two and five times a day, probably if you're out walking

657
01:13:54,240 --> 01:13:59,840
around, doing stuff, going places between two and five times a day in a place that's got a lot of

658
01:13:59,840 --> 01:14:12,480
mainland Chinese. Now let's talk about Chinese merchandise. Oh, no, no. Let's talk about this

659
01:14:12,480 --> 01:14:21,120
other thing first. In this town, there was a huge complex. It was a huge building. Now it's like

660
01:14:21,120 --> 01:14:27,680
three buildings because they made so much money, they expanded. It was a gigantic one-story building.

661
01:14:30,080 --> 01:14:36,880
And the tour buses would pull up to that thing about seven o'clock at night. There might be two

662
01:14:36,880 --> 01:14:44,960
or three hundred tour buses outside of this complex thing. And the Chinese would start lining up to

663
01:14:44,960 --> 01:14:51,680
go in there, husbands and wives, and they got their kids. Little kids, big kids, every kind of kid.

664
01:14:54,080 --> 01:15:02,800
Sometimes they're little yapping dogs. And we watched this thing forever, for years,

665
01:15:04,000 --> 01:15:06,800
and there was no kind of sign that said what went on in there.

666
01:15:06,800 --> 01:15:17,040
We just couldn't figure it out. And we asked around a few times. We'd go to the staff at the

667
01:15:17,040 --> 01:15:23,360
at the window of these places, and we'd say, well, what do we see? If we go in, what do we see?

668
01:15:24,080 --> 01:15:29,040
Oh, you cannot, fang cannot, ma dai, ma dai, fang ma dai, fang, go.

669
01:15:29,040 --> 01:15:35,440
What? Is it a movie? Is it a theater? Is it a...

670
01:15:36,240 --> 01:15:38,480
Pai, pai, kun pai.

671
01:15:42,880 --> 01:15:46,320
And we're like, okay, okay, you know, you know, call the fucking police.

672
01:15:47,760 --> 01:15:51,680
And that went along for a long, long time, like a year. That's as far as we pursued it. And then

673
01:15:51,680 --> 01:16:00,080
finally we found somebody who worked there, who had previously worked there. What in the hell are

674
01:16:00,080 --> 01:16:03,360
they doing in there? The price was really high to go in. I can't remember. It was...

675
01:16:05,360 --> 01:16:12,080
God, I can't remember. It was 50 or 100 US per person to get in there. Really stinking high.

676
01:16:12,080 --> 01:16:21,040
So this place is doing 300 tour buses a night. How many people on tour bus times 50 or 100 bucks?

677
01:16:22,320 --> 01:16:32,240
That's money beyond my comprehension, really. So what could possibly be in there that's such a big draw

678
01:16:32,240 --> 01:16:41,360
that these dirt poor Chinese are paying this by the throngs? And she said, oh, we cannot talk.

679
01:16:41,360 --> 01:16:45,040
We cannot talk. Oh, no, no, no, that is secret. You can't, Phu Lan cannot know this.

680
01:16:46,560 --> 01:16:52,320
And my girlfriend was tired and she took her aside and said, look, bitch, tell me, tell you.

681
01:16:55,360 --> 01:16:59,280
And so little by little it started coming out and then she would open up the door and she said,

682
01:16:59,280 --> 01:17:04,000
hey, I'm going to tell you something. It was a sex show. It wasn't any sex show. It wasn't a

683
01:17:04,000 --> 01:17:11,280
striptease show. It wasn't girls dancing around, you know, nothing like that. It was a sex show.

684
01:17:11,280 --> 01:17:15,920
It, of course, on the stage in every kind of possible position and every kind of twisted

685
01:17:15,920 --> 01:17:24,160
pervert and trucking away. And the show was like three or four hours. So it was quite comprehensive.

686
01:17:24,160 --> 01:17:27,360
And the Chinese would show up on the buses. They didn't have any place to take their kids.

687
01:17:28,080 --> 01:17:33,280
So they took them in and they didn't prohibit them. This is going on today.

688
01:17:35,600 --> 01:17:39,760
And then we finally, we confirmed that through a number of other sources finally, because we

689
01:17:39,760 --> 01:17:43,120
would tell them, look, we know, we know what's going on in there. You know, we're not stupid.

690
01:17:45,120 --> 01:17:47,760
Lived here a decade, you know, now just tell me what's going on in there.

691
01:17:47,760 --> 01:17:52,400
And I said, well, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know.

692
01:17:52,400 --> 01:17:56,960
Tell me what's going on there. And we would bait them a little bit. We know about the sex shows.

693
01:17:57,760 --> 01:18:05,360
Oh, you know. Oh, you're not supposed to know that. Okay. And then they would open up and

694
01:18:05,360 --> 01:18:09,120
they would tell us because we already knew. And they would give us more details and more details.

695
01:18:09,840 --> 01:18:16,800
And the cops were getting payoffs that were incomprehensible. Incomprehensible.

696
01:18:16,800 --> 01:18:22,320
That's the mainland Chinese.

697
01:18:26,560 --> 01:18:33,360
Oh, my God. There used to be a, there used to be, well still is, there's a pier.

698
01:18:34,240 --> 01:18:38,960
Long, long pier. God, it's like, I don't know, two-thirds of a mile goes out in the shallow bay.

699
01:18:40,720 --> 01:18:42,800
And on the end of the pier is a restaurant.

700
01:18:42,800 --> 01:18:49,280
And nobody goes to it at all. It's a seafood restaurant. Nobody goes out there because why

701
01:18:49,280 --> 01:18:54,000
would you? Why would you drive out this long pier only to go to one restaurant when there's 50 of

702
01:18:54,000 --> 01:19:00,720
them where you don't have to drive out on the pier? But this thing is sitting out there by itself.

703
01:19:03,440 --> 01:19:07,520
And I used to go out there quite a bit. I take pictures. It was a little bit of a

704
01:19:07,520 --> 01:19:13,440
picturey kind of a place. So I'd walk out there, take a motorbike out there, whatever.

705
01:19:13,440 --> 01:19:19,440
And I never paid any attention to this restaurant. And one day I was walking by it.

706
01:19:21,440 --> 01:19:26,880
And they had a bunch of live tanks at the front of the restaurant. I'd seen them a thousand times,

707
01:19:26,880 --> 01:19:33,440
but I just looked at them this time. And one of them was full of lobsters.

708
01:19:33,440 --> 01:19:36,960
They were kind of sort of alive, you know, barely. They would twitch once in a while,

709
01:19:36,960 --> 01:19:43,520
so they were technically alive. And the price on them was, God, I got pictures of it. I get

710
01:19:43,520 --> 01:19:54,560
pictures of it, but I can't remember exactly. It was, God, I don't know, like $200 per kilo.

711
01:19:56,560 --> 01:19:58,480
Something like that. Kilogram.

712
01:19:58,480 --> 01:20:02,480
About two pounds. So here's what happened.

713
01:20:05,280 --> 01:20:09,520
The only customers allowed out there... Well, I tried to go in this thing one day.

714
01:20:09,520 --> 01:20:12,480
I tried to go in. I wanted to see what else they had. Maybe they got something affordable,

715
01:20:12,480 --> 01:20:21,680
you know. And I started to go in. And they said, no, no, no, no, filang, no, filang, no, filang.

716
01:20:21,680 --> 01:20:30,400
My alpha line. Ca. I insisted a few times, oh, okay, okay, you don't want me to eat,

717
01:20:30,400 --> 01:20:34,960
but at least I can look at the menu. No, no, no, no, no, no, cannot, cannot, cannot. Maday, maday.

718
01:20:36,560 --> 01:20:42,560
And I never did get to see the whole menu, but this one lobster tank I took a bunch of pictures

719
01:20:42,560 --> 01:20:49,120
of. And I didn't really know what it was, you know. I just looked at the menu, and I was like,

720
01:20:49,120 --> 01:20:56,240
but this one lobster tank, I took a bunch of pictures of it at that moment. And when the

721
01:20:56,800 --> 01:21:01,840
owner saw me taking pictures of it, he came at me with a... What the fuck was it?

722
01:21:03,680 --> 01:21:06,400
Some kind of... Might have been a shovel or something. Can't remember what it was.

723
01:21:06,400 --> 01:21:10,080
There's something long on the end of a stick, you know. Something that could really hurt you.

724
01:21:10,080 --> 01:21:13,760
And he's swinging it at me and yelling something in Thai that I couldn't understand. Or maybe it

725
01:21:13,760 --> 01:21:19,360
was Chinese. And clearly the message was, fuck off, you know, I'm going to hurt you.

726
01:21:20,160 --> 01:21:27,840
And I already had on my picture, so I just walked away. So the deal was that the Chinese

727
01:21:28,640 --> 01:21:31,760
were the only ones allowed to eat there. The Chinese buses would bring

728
01:21:33,040 --> 01:21:39,440
the Chinese tourists in the bus all the way out on the pier, nobody else out there.

729
01:21:39,440 --> 01:21:44,480
And funnel them into this restaurant telling them how special this lobster was,

730
01:21:44,480 --> 01:21:50,000
and how this was the best deal anywhere on earth. And they'd go in and they'd chow down on this

731
01:21:50,000 --> 01:21:58,080
lobster that was, you know, many times the regular price. And then they'd go home and tell everybody

732
01:21:58,960 --> 01:22:04,480
about the, you know, golden plated lobster that they ate in Thailand. Oh, you have to go there.

733
01:22:04,480 --> 01:22:10,160
Not because it was any fucking good, just because they had to try to justify paying an obnoxious,

734
01:22:10,160 --> 01:22:27,520
ludicrous price. So anyway. Okay. Oh no, there is one more aspect of the Chinese.

735
01:22:27,520 --> 01:22:32,720
And I have to cover this. This is about Chinese products and merchandise.

736
01:22:34,480 --> 01:22:39,040
This is one of the biggest annoyances you'll find anywhere in Southeast Asia,

737
01:22:40,640 --> 01:22:44,800
anywhere in Southeast Asia. This is one of the very biggest problems you will have.

738
01:22:45,760 --> 01:22:50,720
And nobody will tell you about this. Nobody. They'll mention it in the chuckle a couple of

739
01:22:50,720 --> 01:22:54,720
times. No, they're not getting through to you. I'm going to try to get through to you.

740
01:22:54,720 --> 01:23:02,320
This is about Chinese merchandise in all of Southeast Asia.

741
01:23:04,320 --> 01:23:14,720
Okay. When I owned the salvage diving and rescue business many lifetimes ago,

742
01:23:14,720 --> 01:23:20,800
we had a bunch of your vessels. We had a couple of small boats. We had like a 44 foot tug. We had an

743
01:23:20,800 --> 01:23:28,000
88 foot tug. We had a lease, a 250 foot tug. And we had a little barge thing and we had a bunch of

744
01:23:28,000 --> 01:23:36,880
stuff. Okay. The barge had twin engines. They both crapped out. And we had a bunch of small

745
01:23:36,880 --> 01:23:53,040
engines. And we're looking around, looking around. Normally you might pop Detroit's in there,

746
01:23:53,040 --> 01:24:00,560
a couple of Perkins or something like that. And we found these ads for these Chinese engines,

747
01:24:00,560 --> 01:24:06,560
an incredible guarantee. And we thought, well then China is kind of the new up and coming

748
01:24:08,400 --> 01:24:14,800
presence in the global merchandise market. You know, what the hell? They were really, really cheap.

749
01:24:16,560 --> 01:24:25,680
And we thought, well, even if they're crappy, you know, a really well-built diesel. You take an old

750
01:24:25,680 --> 01:24:29,920
Atlas or an Enterprise, something like that. I have literally personally seen them go a hundred

751
01:24:29,920 --> 01:24:37,280
years. They're put in a tug in even 1900 and they're still going today if they're properly

752
01:24:37,280 --> 01:24:46,880
maintained, 123 years. A good engine can do that if they're rebuilt on time and properly maintained.

753
01:24:46,880 --> 01:24:56,800
Even a crappy thing like Detroit, fuck. Or a Cad, which is better, but still not like an Enterprise.

754
01:24:56,800 --> 01:25:06,400
They can go 40 years with proper maintenance, 40 years. Maybe some guys are running them still at

755
01:25:06,400 --> 01:25:12,000
60 or a little bit. 40 is not unreasonable. If they're only lasting 20 years, then you're probably

756
01:25:12,000 --> 01:25:20,960
doing something wrong. Okay. So we figured, okay, if these things are shit, you know, or God, I don't

757
01:25:20,960 --> 01:25:29,760
know, maybe the worst case scenario, 15 years, you know. So we popped the bottom.

758
01:25:31,520 --> 01:25:36,400
And they shipped them from China. They showed up nicely created. We uncreated them on the dock and

759
01:25:37,600 --> 01:25:42,720
had a winch and we lowered them into the engine rooms of this barge and hooked them up. And

760
01:25:43,600 --> 01:25:47,200
yeah, they were okay. Everything was in Chinese. All the gauges were in Chinese.

761
01:25:47,200 --> 01:25:51,280
And we had no freaking idea what they were reading and stuff like that. So that was a problem.

762
01:25:52,000 --> 01:25:57,680
They came with all kinds of spare parts. And we noticed that the workmanship was kind of funky,

763
01:25:58,400 --> 01:26:01,360
you know, to say the least. But we thought, well, you know.

764
01:26:08,640 --> 01:26:15,360
Filipinos can be supremely inconsiderate, like they usually are. That will be an annoyance for

765
01:26:15,360 --> 01:26:24,240
you if you come to the Philippines. Supremely inconsiderate. Supremely. They just don't care.

766
01:26:24,240 --> 01:26:30,400
They have no concept of common courtesy. None. Doesn't enter their little brains.

767
01:26:32,160 --> 01:26:39,280
So be prepared for that. Anyway, we're thinking, okay, 15 years, we'll get 15 years. We unboxed

768
01:26:39,280 --> 01:26:45,680
them and got them in and they ran. They ran. They didn't seem to have the horsepower that they were

769
01:26:45,680 --> 01:26:50,160
advertised to have, but you know, it's okay. Barge didn't have to go very fast anyway.

770
01:26:52,640 --> 01:26:57,040
And we ran them around for a while and they came with a whole bunch of spare parts. And we thought,

771
01:26:57,040 --> 01:27:03,760
well, that's nice. That's a nice touch. We kind of wondered, well, why would they

772
01:27:03,760 --> 01:27:11,360
say you think we need all these spare parts? But, you know, okay. Within six months,

773
01:27:11,360 --> 01:27:16,400
we had used up probably all the spare parts because every component went out.

774
01:27:19,120 --> 01:27:24,960
God. And, oh geez, this is ridiculous.

775
01:27:24,960 --> 01:27:34,640
Okay. Okay. Then another aspect of Filipinos is that when they are supremely inconsiderate, which is

776
01:27:35,440 --> 01:27:45,840
most of the time, and you call them on it, they're also supremely apologetic and polite.

777
01:27:47,040 --> 01:27:49,040
That's the other side of the Filipino coin.

778
01:27:49,040 --> 01:27:52,640
You know, it doesn't occur to them to just avoid the whole problem and stop being

779
01:27:53,360 --> 01:28:03,040
inconsiderate in the first place, but, you know, that's a... it helps. It helps when they're nice.

780
01:28:04,000 --> 01:28:10,960
It's like they're driving on the freeway and some guy cuts you off and then flips you off.

781
01:28:10,960 --> 01:28:22,400
Some guy cuts you off and then flips you off. Huh? Really? Let's have a word about this,

782
01:28:22,400 --> 01:28:27,200
Paizano. Okay. That's going to be your attitude. But if some guy cuts you off

783
01:28:30,640 --> 01:28:37,360
and then somehow makes it known to you that he is sorry he did that, defuses it, done, it's over.

784
01:28:37,360 --> 01:28:47,920
You say, okay. Okay. Forgotten. Have a nice day. Okay. So, within a year

785
01:28:49,920 --> 01:28:54,320
to a year and a half at most, I think we struggled on for about a year and a half,

786
01:28:55,360 --> 01:29:00,800
both of these engines were steaming piles of junk. And we jerked them out of there and

787
01:29:00,800 --> 01:29:06,800
had a little forklift. We took them over and shoved them off the side of the board.

788
01:29:11,280 --> 01:29:18,080
That was our very first introduction into Chinese merchandise. Now, we noticed over the coming years

789
01:29:18,080 --> 01:29:24,560
that little by little by little Chinese goods were beginning to creep into the American marketplace

790
01:29:24,560 --> 01:29:31,840
and all the Western countries. They were shit. They were as shit or more shit than these engines.

791
01:29:34,400 --> 01:29:40,240
Oh, that was bad stuff. In the old, old, old days, if you remember that, expats will remember it.

792
01:29:41,760 --> 01:29:46,880
Anytime something said made in Japan, it was joke. You'd buy it. Don't go near it. Made in Japan.

793
01:29:46,880 --> 01:29:54,720
Had a little sticker. No, forget it. Don't buy it. The Chinese, however, learned over decades. They

794
01:29:54,720 --> 01:30:06,400
learned how to make better stuff. And they did. And now what's the quality of, I mean, Japanese.

795
01:30:08,240 --> 01:30:13,040
These abs, the antibiotics are screwing me up. The Japanese stuff

796
01:30:13,040 --> 01:30:17,680
is pretty good now. It's really good. In many cases, it surpasses American made,

797
01:30:18,160 --> 01:30:28,640
even German made in many cases. Okay. I'm going to try to struggle through the rest of this one

798
01:30:28,640 --> 01:30:34,400
subject and then we're done. Oh, okay. It's pretty bad when the medicine makes you about as sick as

799
01:30:34,400 --> 01:30:44,080
the illness, you know. So we've watched the influx of Chinese goods and everybody knew to stay away

800
01:30:44,080 --> 01:30:51,680
from it. The whole Japanese thing was over and done because the Japanese learned and they started

801
01:30:51,680 --> 01:30:56,320
making good stuff. And it's like, okay, good, good. It's good stuff. We'll buy it. But the Chinese

802
01:30:56,320 --> 01:31:03,120
stuff was as bad as the Japanese stuff, if not worse. The weird thing was that the Chinese stuff

803
01:31:03,120 --> 01:31:08,160
was as bad as the Japanese stuff. The Chinese never learned to make good stuff. They never

804
01:31:08,160 --> 01:31:13,920
improved their stuff one bit. Now there are a few isolated factories in China like Apple

805
01:31:14,960 --> 01:31:27,360
and they can make good stuff only if the Western bosses stand there and watch every move like a

806
01:31:27,360 --> 01:31:35,920
hawk. Then they can make the Chinese make decent stuff. But if they don't do that, if they just

807
01:31:35,920 --> 01:31:41,440
turn them loose, they're going to produce shit and they seem to be incapable of learning to do

808
01:31:41,440 --> 01:31:48,400
anything better. Period. That's the conclusion that I've come to. So in the early days, we could see

809
01:31:48,400 --> 01:31:52,960
the Chinese stuff coming on the shelves because it was either said, you know, made in Japan or it had

810
01:31:52,960 --> 01:32:03,120
a Chinese name. It's like, oh, no, thank you. No, we learned. We learned about that shit because

811
01:32:03,120 --> 01:32:08,160
every goddamn thing you bought, you got it home and 24 hours later or a week later or a month later,

812
01:32:08,160 --> 01:32:15,280
a blender, an iron, didn't matter. Toaster oven didn't matter. It was shit. It was gone. It quit

813
01:32:15,280 --> 01:32:23,360
or caught on fire or blew up or some damn thing. So we didn't want Chinese stuff at all.

814
01:32:25,520 --> 01:32:34,000
What happened was that the two things happened. The profit margin on Chinese stuff was so extreme

815
01:32:34,000 --> 01:32:46,320
that American importers and big chains, Home, Labyrinth and all, you know, Walmart, all of every

816
01:32:46,320 --> 01:32:51,760
single big chain just started importing it more and more and more and more and more because the

817
01:32:51,760 --> 01:32:59,600
profit was just too big to turn down. The other thing that started to happen was somebody got to

818
01:32:59,600 --> 01:33:03,920
the Chinese and they said, hey, people see a Chinese looking name, they won't buy your shit.

819
01:33:03,920 --> 01:33:10,800
You got to make a name that sounds American. And they did. And so now people are fooled into buying

820
01:33:10,800 --> 01:33:22,080
Chinese stuff. Now, another thing happened in the U.S. when a lot of stuff fails, people will bitch.

821
01:33:22,080 --> 01:33:30,080
That's the only upside to bitchy Americans. When merchandise fails, consumers will bitch.

822
01:33:30,080 --> 01:33:35,200
They go back to the store, they post reviews, they do all kinds of stuff. They get refunds,

823
01:33:35,200 --> 01:33:41,120
they'll file chargebacks on their credit cards. They're not going to stand for shit. And the

824
01:33:41,120 --> 01:33:46,240
retailers got this idea. They know it and they don't want to have a bunch of chargebacks and

825
01:33:46,240 --> 01:33:53,840
they don't want to have a bunch of confrontations. And so they still want that big profit, but

826
01:33:55,600 --> 01:34:01,520
what they've done is they have taken the worst offending Chinese crap.

827
01:34:03,840 --> 01:34:09,440
And they kind of sort of tend to call it out because they don't want problems.

828
01:34:09,440 --> 01:34:16,400
They still import Chinese stuff by the ship load, by the thousands of ship loads, but they try to

829
01:34:16,400 --> 01:34:23,600
make sure that it's a little higher grade of Chinese shit. Okay, so that keeps the chargebacks

830
01:34:23,600 --> 01:34:29,680
and the problems at a minimum. They still have many more problems with Chinese, even the best

831
01:34:29,680 --> 01:34:33,760
grade of Chinese stuff. They have more problems than they do with American-made or Western-made

832
01:34:33,760 --> 01:34:43,280
stuff. They have more problems than they do with American-made or Western-made stuff. But people are cheap bastards and they want cheap stuff and so they keep bringing it in. Okay, now

833
01:34:45,840 --> 01:34:46,880
in Southeast Asia,

834
01:34:50,480 --> 01:34:52,800
there's virtually no such thing as a return policy.

835
01:34:52,800 --> 01:35:07,840
And Southeast Asians don't complain much at all, ever. So Southeast Asia, TICE, let's say the TICE, they buy, let's say 10,000 people buy a toaster, 9,994 of them blow up.

836
01:35:09,280 --> 01:35:16,960
The store probably never knows about it. If they do, they don't care. They don't care because there's no returns.

837
01:35:16,960 --> 01:35:28,720
Southeast Asia doesn't normally run on credit cards, so there's no such thing as a chargeback. They run on debit cards. So once you bought something, you're on your own. That's it, you're done.

838
01:35:30,080 --> 01:35:37,440
So there's no incentive for Southeast Asian retailers to bring in Chinese stuff that works.

839
01:35:37,440 --> 01:35:48,880
They don't care. Whatever's got the highest profit, that's what they're going to bring in. That's what they're going to sell. And they probably won't even order in the stuff that has a slightly lower profit margin that works.

840
01:35:50,160 --> 01:35:51,360
So in Southeast Asia,

841
01:35:53,120 --> 01:36:02,000
all you've got is the shittiest of the shit Chinese stuff. You're not going to get American-made. You're not going to get Western-made in any way.

842
01:36:02,000 --> 01:36:09,360
Unless you import it. And the import taxes are going to be two or three times the cost of the item.

843
01:36:10,800 --> 01:36:11,760
So you're not going to do it.

844
01:36:12,880 --> 01:36:21,520
I was in a big luxury condo for a while. It had five... we all use these on-demand hot water heaters here. There's no such thing as a hot water tank.

845
01:36:24,080 --> 01:36:26,160
This condo had five hot water heaters.

846
01:36:26,160 --> 01:36:31,680
No, wait. One, two. Four. Four, I think.

847
01:36:32,560 --> 01:36:44,560
Yeah, it had four. In the year that I was there, I replaced them five times. So all of them once and one of them twice with new Chinese hot water heaters.

848
01:36:45,440 --> 01:36:47,920
That's the kind of shit you're going to get in Southeast Asia.

849
01:36:47,920 --> 01:36:55,440
And that translates straight across to every single item. Every single item. I don't care what it is.

850
01:36:56,640 --> 01:37:01,840
That's the experience you're going to have with Chinese shit. It's garbage.

851
01:37:03,760 --> 01:37:11,440
There was a big, wig, Chinese politician on the news a while ago saying, well, you know, we do this because people are going to be paying for it.

852
01:37:11,440 --> 01:37:21,040
I wanted to get him by scrambling his fucking Chinese throat and say, yeah, you stupid moron son of a bitch. Yeah, we want cheap stuff. But first and foremost, it has to fucking work.

853
01:37:21,680 --> 01:37:26,640
If it doesn't work, it doesn't matter how cheap it is. I won't give you a penny for it because it doesn't fucking work.

854
01:37:27,440 --> 01:37:31,680
In fact, maybe it's a liability. Maybe it's going to burn my goddamn house down, you fucking jackass.

855
01:37:31,680 --> 01:37:40,960
You know, Jesus Christ, they are. Are they genetically stupid or the Chinese genetically stupid?

856
01:37:42,880 --> 01:37:50,240
You know, nature or nurture? I think it's both. I think they're genetically stupid and their culture also keeps them stupid.

857
01:37:50,240 --> 01:38:06,240
That's what I believe. I have no use for the Chinese whatsoever. Just zero. Zero. Zero. What a Zuckerberg Mary. Let's see. Oh, yeah. Okay.

858
01:38:06,240 --> 01:38:22,240
One of the stupidest men on earth. What did he marry? Oh, that's a low blow, isn't it? Zuck, you stupid little fuck. Jesus Christ. Zuck the duck. Jesus. Okay. Oh, that's a whole nother rent. That's a whole nother putt.

859
01:38:22,240 --> 01:38:36,240
Okay, so anywhere in Southeast Asia. So how are you going to get it? I bought a fan one time in Thailand. A big fan. A big industrial fan. We needed it for a huge shop.

860
01:38:36,240 --> 01:38:52,240
Big mother. In fact, we had to get a pickup to haul it home. And I paid about 500 bucks for it. And we put it in a shop as far as I could. And it was a very, very cheap, very cheap, very cheap, very cheap.

861
01:38:52,240 --> 01:39:08,240
And a couple years later, I just got to think, what the hell would that thing cost in America? And I looked it up. Exact same fan, exact same brand, exact same everything in the US from Amazon.

862
01:39:08,240 --> 01:39:24,240
And it was some ungodly thing, like $7,000. So there you go. Okay, well, we're done. I don't know if we're done, but I'm done.

863
01:39:24,240 --> 01:39:31,240
This is my last day of abs. Oh, geez, they're really nasty. Abs are just nasty things. They're evil. Concentrated evil. Little pills of concentrated evil. Don't take them. Be careful. Don't put yourself in a position where you have to take them from the

864
01:39:31,240 --> 01:39:55,240
something that's totally avoidable. It's one thing you catch some disease, you know, or some bug hits you and then your gums kick sized balls and you're done. If you like that shit, you know quick and easy stops.

865
01:39:55,240 --> 01:40:01,360
You know, it's one thing you catch some disease, you know, some bug gets you, and then you

866
01:40:01,360 --> 01:40:02,360
got to take abs.

867
01:40:02,360 --> 01:40:04,880
Okay, well, that's bad.

868
01:40:04,880 --> 01:40:11,960
But you know, you end up taking abs because your doctor prescribes shit that nearly kills

869
01:40:11,960 --> 01:40:16,680
you, and then you got to take the abs to straighten that out, and then abs are going to do bad

870
01:40:16,680 --> 01:40:21,560
things to you too, and you start wondering what's the point in going to the doctor, you

871
01:40:21,560 --> 01:40:22,560
know.

872
01:40:22,560 --> 01:40:28,800
Well, there is a point, sometimes, in some cases, but not nearly as much as people think.

873
01:40:28,800 --> 01:40:31,880
Not nearly as much.

874
01:40:31,880 --> 01:40:34,200
I got stories about that.

875
01:40:34,200 --> 01:40:35,200
Okay.

876
01:40:35,200 --> 01:40:39,960
Whatever the hell episode this was, I think it was 17, I don't know, my brain is fading

877
01:40:39,960 --> 01:40:40,960
fast.

878
01:40:40,960 --> 01:40:53,500
Man.