But it wasn't all a walk in the park - indeed, getting there was substantially less than half the fun, as my plans to start in Jakarta were spoiled by Islamic militants who subverted civic systems and flooded the city center. The mass media glossed over this nefarious plot, laying it off on global warming, as they have with virtually every crisis in modern times, but, with the help of reliable sources on the Internet, I saw this checkers match between the forces of good and evil for what it was, and noted it in my to-do journal.
Geopolitics aside, the slow-mo bureaucracy at EVA Air, indifferent to the fact that 70% of Jakarta was submerged beneath 12 feet of water, insisted that no one else on the flight had requested a change of destination, and if I wanted to change destinations, I would have to cancel my entire ticket and forfeit a $100 cancellation fee before rebooking a new ticket. After getting nowhere in telephone calls to both Los Angeles and Taipei offices, I was left with no other choice but to follow their knuckleheaded counsel and buy an entirely new ticket for about a 50% increase in price, all this despite the fact that the bulk of travel on both itineraries was the flight from LA to Taipei. Not to mention that I'm Evergreen Gold, for chrissake. What good is loyalty if they don't cut you some slack? I'm thinking of switching to Arab Emirates - you can bet they're used to the customer always being right.
I also lost my choice seat assignment, even though I was booked on the same flight from LA to Taipei, and found myself sitting in a middle seat on a 747-400 between two couples with babies. As a matter of fact, there were more babies on this flight than I've ever seen on a plane in my natural life - there must have been an adoption special for Chinese New Year. No worries - a couple of Ambien washed down with a tumbler full of Bailey's and I was out like a proverbial light. Which is fortunate, because by my measurements EVA's seats did not measure up to their estimated pitch & width specs; in fact, according to my Briggs & Stratton Laser Micrometer, both fell several millimeters short of the expected 33-34 inch pitch and 17 inch seat width. Granted, I took measurements after taking the Ambien, but lasers don't lie - do they?
In any event, I seem to recall a long delay on the tarmac at LAX, something about a prisoner in transit demanding political asylum and gumming up the works for a few hours... or was that the movie? I wish they'd get bigger screens. And I think maybe we had to stop in either Alaska or Guam to take on fuel, causing us to miss the Taipei connection to Manila... but it's all kind of a haze. I guess some kindly Filipino passenger must have helped me, because the next thing I remember clearly is waking up in my hotel room amid a bunch of cardboard boxes, my custom-finish Samsonite luggage set nowhere to be found.
Incidentally, I was forced to change hotels several times during my all-too-brief visit to this land of culture and enchantment. Initially assigned a ground-floor room, I was constantly hassled by a seemingly endless stream of touts hawking sunglasses, watches, Viagra, Oriental rugs, cheap furniture and engine rebuild kits, and was finally compelled to move to another hotel. After a few days, I was forced to move again to avoid the many bargirls I met who were determined to bear my child. Fortunately, I had brung along my new Samsung Ne Plus Ultra EverythingInTheWorldPhone (don't look it up, it's not yet available to the hoi polloi), which can sort phone numbers by priority, performance and pulchritude in Excel and import into a 3-D PowerPoint presentation, so I was able to make up for lost time with increased efficiency.
The money changers on Field were offering a rate of 46.55, but my CitiBank VISA card was exchanging at 46.99, and my Washington Mutual debit card was even better at 48.01. But the Wamu card charged $1 for each transaction, so I had to once again employ my new superphone to construct a spreadsheet and calculate precisely when I should use which exchange method, but sometime into the third hour I fell asleep and didn't wake up until the next morning, immediately making off to Johnny's Market to replace my lost toiletries. I apologize for not listing my purchases and the local prices - I know how critical these details can be when planning your next trip - but I lost the receipt when I stopped for a drink on the way back to the hotel.
I tried to hook up for a few drinks and some monger camaraderie with a couple of CH guys who were in town, but TabbyCat2 and I are both so fat that we couldn't fit in the same booth at any of the bars, Deuteronomy was so obsessed with speed-mongering that he would just come and go, and IronPussy69 mumbled incomprehensibly, burst into tears and hugged me until I felt one of my ribs give way. If only some of the vets were there to show us how it's done, I'm sure we could have got it right, but on our own we were lost.
Much energy has been expended of late decrying the supposed deterioration of Angeles City as we know it, and I for one am here to cry Nay! To my mind, things are better than ever. For one, there's a lot more available hotel space. I can't forget that 4th of July when Central Park and Royal Amsterdam foiled my double-booking pyramid scheme, and there was not a room to be had in the whole of AC. Fortunately some shaba vixens kicked their dog out and let me stay with them in their little foxhole beneath the bridge, and took turns licking my asshole all night. Or was that the dog?
Hotels in Angeles have always been a trade-off: one has little teeny towels and charges you for extras, another has seriously vacillating water pressure and the water often smells of sewage, another is surrounded by karaoke joints that keep you awake all night... or is that the same hotel? Anyway, now you can get a room at about the quality and price you would expect in a Holiday Inn back home. How bad is that?
It's a lot easier these days to extricate yourself from the clinging vines that everyone used to love to whine about. Most self-respecting go-go dancers now prefer to do at least two ST barfines a night to keep both their social standing in the bar and their trike driver boyfriends in rum. So there's no longer a need to sponsor a girl out of sympathy for her plight. One Blue Nile cutie confesses that, like most of her friends, she subscribes to the 2-a-night model, good-naturedly announcing that she doesn't like Koreans because they don't tip well. She explains that Japanese tip P4 to 5 thousand, Koreans only 2,500. (I reply, "Wait 'til you see what I tip for ST.")
Nobody likes Koreans. They spit in the ashtrays. Everybody likes their money and their profligacy, which serves the social good by improving these poor downtrodden females' self-image. No doubt in support of such laudable raising of self-esteem, there is at least one bar in town that quietly caters almost exclusively to the Asian trade (shades of "Japanese Only" signs in Bangkok!) Therein I noticed that I was the only non-Asian, and confronted a waitress: "I'll bet none of the girls here will go with white guys." Helpfully, she pointed, "That one will."
Santos Street is a distant memory, but if you cringe at paying premium prices, you can still get yourself down to Nifty's/Club Rio and be sucked off in public view by a girl you wouldn't want to be seen with on the street, or take her upstairs for bargain-rate full service in a puddle of somebody else's ejaculate. Doesn't get much better than that.
However, I will be the first (or maybe second) to proclaim that the new SM Mall is a blight, a real threat to the status quo. Bargirls used to like to sleep in and squander their day, but now they rush off to spend their double-barfine bounty in air-conditioned splendor, which makes them soft as well as habitually cranky from sleep deprivation. Used to be, if you saw a bargirl walking down a seedy Angeles street, you could strike up a conversation and arrange a tryst on the spot. Sometimes they were happy just to get out of the heat into aircon. Now they're too damn cool and comfortable, and the faux respectability of swanning around a hoity-toity mall makes 'em standoffish. But I must admit that it's a good place to pay familiar prices for souvenir t-shirts and jeans, especially if your luggage gets lost.
Now, as most of you know from my previous trip reports, I prefer to follow a strict protocol in my sessions: First, due to allergies and asthma, I meticulously bathe the girl TWICE (lather, rinse, repeat) in Ivory 99 & 44/100 soap, then rinse her in Downy Free. Thereafter it is my custom to indulge in 17 minutes of DATY, and an equal (or concurrent) time for BBBJ; 12 minutes reverse cowgirl; 9 minutes doggie; six 4-minute sprints of freestyle, standing and/or her own ideas; punctuated with spontaneous ATP & PTM, culminating in CIM, unless GKW, then WTF? GTFO! (ROTFLMFAO!) But on this trip, I found myself frequently breaking with tradition, as well as breaking wind, but the latter had more to do with eating from street stands and the consumption of at least fourteen vitamin supplements per hour as recommended by other posters on this board to enhance stamina and endurance. I also might have mixed in a little too much Romilar, Sudafed or Nyquil, since I came down with what they're calling in LA "The 100 Day Flu", and was doing just about anything to stop sneezing & wheezing and get to pleasing. Anyhow... what was I talking about?
I TOOK THE HOTEL CAR TO THE AIRPORT BECAUSE ANOTHER GUEST ALSO NEEDED TO GO TO THE AIRPORT AT THE SAME TIME SO AFTER MUCH DELIBERATION I FIGURED I COULD SPLIT THE FARE WITH HIM AND DO PRETTY WELL EVEN THOUGH I COULD HAVE SAVED AN EXTRA COUPLE HUNDRED PESOS BY WALKING ABOUT A MILE WITH ALL MY CARDBOARD BOXES AND WAITING OUTDOORS FOR THE BUS FOR AN HOUR THEN TRANSFERRING IN MANILA AND WAITING ANOTHER HOUR BUT MY FLIGHT WAS PRETTY EARLY AND IT WOULD HAVE TAKEN ABOUT 2 OR 3 XTRA HRS SO I JUST GRINNED AND SWALLOWED BUT THAT GOT ME TO THE AIRPORT WAY EARLY SO I HAD TO WAIT AROUND UNTIL THEY OPENED THE EVA TERMINAL WHICH THEY DID BY MOVING THE STARTING POINT BEHIND WHERE I'D BEEN STANDING FOR ABOUT AN HOUR SO I HAD TO ARGUE WITH THE DUMB FILIPINOS BEHIND ME THAT I DESERVED TO BE 1ST IN LINE BECAUSE I'D BEEN WAITING THE LONGEST EVEN THOUGH THE LINE STARTED WHERE THEY WERE AND THEN AFTER GOING THRU CUSTOMS I REALIZED THAT THE IDIOT WOMAN HAD KEPT MY COPY JUST LIKE SHE WAS DOING FOR ABOUT EVERYBODY AND I HAD TO GO BACK AND WAIT IN LINE AGAIN TO GET IT AND EVEN THOUGH THEY TOOK EVERYBODY ELSE ASIDE AND TOLD THEM TO JUST WALK BACK TO THE FRONT AND]?;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;
Hey, I just woke up and noticed that after I drank that quadruple espresso last night at 3 AM I must have accidentally hit the caps lock button and then passed out on the keyboard. So anyway, here are some pictures of the lounge that EVA shares with about 6 other airlines in MNL, and the EVA lounge in Taipei, and some cool stuff in the Taipei airport. Both lounges are nice and quiet, with lots of snack-type food and free drinks, and I figured I might as well get a head start on another couple of long flights, so I did the Ambien + Bailey's thing, and I don't really remember the trip back, except I took a lot of pictures of the plane's bathroom for some reason.
Problem: my passport shows that I've been to the Philippines many times in the past few years, and I've gotten the 2nd degree, if not the secondary, more than once lately at LAX. Between the 100 Day Flu + medications + sleeping pills + booze + the sheer exhaustion of doing roughly one session every other waking hour, I knew I'd be pretty groggy and more likely than usual to blurt out something incriminating at Customs. So I devised a plan that worked brilliantly: I pretended to be deaf-mute, and when anybody asked me a question, I opened my shirt and flashed my "I'm With Stupid" t-shirt. They couldn't get me out of there fast enough! Try it, you'll like it.
All pics were taken with a 1972 Panaflex 35mm motion picture camera with Auto Panatar anamorphic lens that served as Camera 2 in Stephen Spielberg's remake of "The Trouble With Puddy" before being decommissioned and heavily modded for single-shot service at Hummer HQ, where its original 25-lb hand-held heft was lightened considerably by replacing most steel parts with custom-milled titanium recycled from decommissioned ICBMs (the faint glow-in-the-dark effect helps in low-light situations.) Dunno much about f-stops and the like, so I just set it on AUTO and click away.
Oh, yeah, the girls?... I don't really remember where I found most of 'em, or their names even, but I had a really good time with all of them, and I bet they're out there almost every night. That is, unless you clowns are sending them money so they can get fat and lazy working the Internet instead. YOUR fun is ruining MY fun!
Photos: Number One 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08
Photos: Number Two 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16
Photos: Number Three 17 18
Photos: Number Four 19 20 21
Photos: Number Five 22 23
Photos: Number Six 24 25
Photo: Number Seven 26
Photos: Number Eight 27 28
Photo: Number Nine 29
Photos: Number Ten 30 31 32
Photos: CG 33 34
