MightyBobX Quotage

part of my online conversation with the comcast representative setting up my new account:

Merline> I understand that you are interested in our Digital Starter and High Speed Internet Bundle. Is that correct?

guest> yes, the cable + internet package

Merline> Yes that is correct.
Merline> I have here a great news for you! Instead of the $66/month for the bundle, the new promotional rate is $59.99/month good for 12 months. How does that sound?
Merline> I am now in the process of scheduling the installation.

guest> it sounds terrible

Merline> HUh?

guest> but i'll take it ("wink" smiley)

Merline> What you mean you don't like to have the rate lowered down to $59.99?
Merline> ("intent" smiley)
Merline> Alright...I am adding it. I wonder why you said it's terrible when in fact the rate is lower than the original rate.


and the final answer is... Cebu, in the phillipines

so yeah. we're looking for a massage parlor with cute girls, and we settle on "freedom bar massage". they take us upstairs, we're each in our own room with a bed on the ground, but it's a thin, temporary wall separating the rooms, so we can still talk to each other. the upstairs + bed part is a little fishy, but we hadn't seen that many parlors yet, so we figured it was just their style. they go into the massage, which is so-so. about half way through my girl starts joking about "special massage". a few minutes after that she offers a price. i tell her no, i don't have much money, too poor, etc.. she tries to sell it for a while, but eventually gives up and continues as normal (though i could tell she'd lost a sparkle in her eye and wasn't quite as into it as before). about 10 minutes before the end, i hear another customer enter downstairs, and after a minute my girl tells me "you go other room! this room special only!" "um, really? you want me to change rooms?" "this room special only! you no want special. you go other room" "uh, ok". the other room is less decorated, crappier beds, and less space, and now chris and dave are there, because they too got kicked out. the girls finish our massages, but proceed to berate us the rest of the time for not getting the special massage. "why you come here?" "here special only. you no want special,you go somewhere else". "we special. you no special, you no come here". over and over. but it's all with a smile on their faces, and they seemed excited to be telling us this. they repeat lines like these until the end, at which point she delivers the punchline: "you no ever come back here again". the customer service in thailand is amazing :)

oh man. best day ever. so, we go to some bar with the group last night (reminder: group = dave's friends, which is george, a couple of his guy friends, and 5 girls, all who live in the same house george is renting) and then go to a pool hall afterwards to play pool with the asian girls who try to seduce you with their skills. i'm playing some lady who's better than me, and her young, attractive, canadian friend comes in, so i invite her to the boat trip we're all going on the next day. today we all get on this boat at eighht fucking thirty and drink like madmen, enjoying swimming, beach coves, private beaches, prepared luxurious lunches, and rock out with these cool, cute girls and fun guys. (as a side note, i climbed a cave with this guy tom; a fucking 50 foot vertical climb with rocks as sharp as razor blades; we lacerated ourselves and came back bleeding rather excessively, but managed to survive the rest of teh day. pretty sweet). everyone is cleaning up and napping now, so i think dave and i are going to continue our mission to get a massage every day (5$ for an hour of full body? fuck yeah) and then we'll all go eat and party tonight. hehe, i'll tell the story about getting kicked out of the massage parlor later

onto the final portion of the trip! i'm in koh samui, an island in thailand. it's by far the most touristy place i've been, but in a good way. it has some of the cheapness of bangkok (though a few things are far more expensive). for instance, we've found a hotel where we got two double rooms for 1300 baht a night, which amounts to 40 a night for 3 people... not too shabby. the rooms are small, but really cool, and right on the beach. taxis are waaay more expensive than bangkok though, but i guess that's not saying much: in bangkok, we got a 1.5 hour taxi ride for about six dollars. koh samui is basically the sexy, touristy version of bangkok; there's a main road that goes all the way around the island, and in the downtowny area it's nothing but shops, restaurants, nice restaurants (nice means the average entree costs a whopping 10-15 USD), bars, and spring-break-type clubs (a shitload of white people dancing in big open areas). i kind of like it more than bangkok, just because it's like 50-80% white here, and i for some reason have a much easier time meeting people who speak english and, honestly, are white. that's not to say i haven't made plenty of asian acquaintances, but when it comes to hitting on girls at bars, it takes a special effort if they don't look the right way.
anyway, we're here for 11 more nights, and it should be fun. we've met a crowd of dave's friends who are all sharing a house on the island (it's very "the real world" when you talk to them about it) and the girls seem really fun, so i think we'll have a blast. the only limiting factor is i've basically run out of money (ok, not *out* but i really need to pay attention to how much i'm spending the rest of it). this is unfortunate and unexpected, because i didn't think i'd have an issue at all this trip, based on estimates from thayer. we've since learned that this trip is completely different than the previous trip he was basing his estimates on, so i'll have the joy of being extremely poor until i can get a few paychecks under my belt when i get back. but that's what credit cards are for, right? and debt to friends? and prostitution? anyway, totally worth it. i'm a huge, huge idiot for not having been travelling like this my whole life. i feel like i'm learning a ton of new things and really growing in important ways, and otherwise just having a really good time. hooray for asia!

bangkok is seedy. but really cheap, and has really good food. having some shirts tailored ($25 a pop, not too shabby) cuz i need to get some / get used to dress shirts. uh, clubs, bars, and ping pong shows. hopefully we'll get to see some muy thai boxing. so far better than malaysia, but not hong kong

so ended up not going to macau with chris (who was chasing after his woman) and instead hung out with pretty much everyone we'd met in hong kong. we all partied in lkf and had a good time, then i went home. ended up finding thayer kind of late the next day, as he ended up spending the night there and we had some communication troubles. got out fine and flew off to kuala lumpur, malaysia, where we met chris's friends dave and farhon. farhon lives here with his family and has been most gracious about letting us stay at his house near the city, and dave is our travel buddy for the remainder of the trip. KL is vastly different than HK; the majority of it is super open suburbs, huge highways with no cars, and vast, empty plains and rolling hills with occasional monster architecture. they're really into planning here, so like in a game of sim city, they've built convention centers, government buildings, and other public infrastructre long before it's needed or before people have built houses anywhere nearby, planning for the empty space to be filled in. i guess you can do that kind of stuff when you have a king who builds crazy palaces for himself. the buildings are impressive though.
each day is basically us waking up at 1-2pm, being fed by farhon's mom and maid, getting a ride to the train station or city, seeing the sights and hitting the night scene, then arguing with cab drivers for the fare back to suban jaya (the suburb we live in) and getting lost on the way back here because none of them know how to navigate in their own town. we've met a few people, no one that interesting. seen the petronas towers and KL tower, chinatown, some really, really shady bars with 70% hookers and she-males. this last night we've gotten a sweet hotel in downtown so we don't have to deal with the transit bullshit we've gotten tired of. the cab drivers here are a real pain; they won't use the meter because the government set the price too low, so you have to haggle them down from a ridiculous price every time, only to get lost every single time.
the downtown isn't bad, but the bars haven't been stellar and they're kind of spread out. we all much prefer hk. the weather is quite a bit cooler, but still tropical. this hotel has a sweet 4th floor patio pool that's right on the edge of the building (the water waterfalls over the edge) and we had a great time swimming when a downpour came around. gonna go out with farhon tonight (the only day besides sunday we've done anything with him, because he's been working), then club until i meet up with an interesting iranian girl we met earlier. then tomorrow we're off to bangkok, which spending a single night in can make a hard man humble. toods and clubs