*SARGE*
The man to your left is known to the American public as Ryan Kristan. To the Southeast Asia community, he is referred to only as Sarge. He is the most responsible one of the three American travelers. He is also the individual who can be the most surly in the morning. Those local individuals who attempted to offer him a motorbike ride in the morning were often faced with a look of absolute and utter scorn. The glasses you see resting atop his hat in the picture, have the magical power to look Death directly into the eyes of the viewer. The source of numerous unquantifiable quotes, one of the more memorable was the following conversation between a motorbike offeror in, perhaps Bangkok, and Sarge.
Motorbike guy: "You want motorbike? Take you wherever you want. Where you going?"
Sarge: "To hell. Straight. Straight to hell."
The brilliance of the quote, taken within the context of traveling for one month being persistently badgered by these guys, is in its simplicity.
*MAPQUEST*
Upon his arrival into Southeast Asia, the first words uttered from Mapquest to myself was, "Hey, mapless wonder, where are we going?". From that point on, I graciously allowed Mapquest, aka Craig Murtha, aka Murtha, aka Frank, aka Murtaw, to handle the map global positioning responsibilities. Certain words were spoken by Mr. Murtha in regards to his superior map reading skills, blah, blah, blah. It didn't take long for Murtha to get us lost and stuck in a rainstorm in Bangkok.
Besides his inability to efficiently lead us around a city, Murtha brought some serious drinking skills to the table. He was a shot of adrenaline into the exhausted traveling body that was Sarge and Sniffles.
Equally impressive was Murtha's innate ability to speak completely over the heads of locals. One poignant example of Murtha's mastery of the English languge, and the local's absolute confusion, occurred in the Bangkok Traveler Information Center. The group wanted to figure out how / where to get a suit made. The following is a rough memorization of the conversation.
Me to female worker of info center: "We would like to get suits made. Can you tell us where to go on this map?"
Female worker: Only a smile on her face. (the universal, "I have no idea what you are talking about")
Me: "Tailor. Suit. Pants. Garment. Clothing".
Female worker: Still, nothing.
Mapquest: "Ok, THE FRENCHIES told us we can get some suits made in Bangkok. Where do we gotta go to get that done?"
Female worker: More silence.
*SNIFFLES*
This man to your left was eventually labeled as Sniffles, based upon his inevitable fight against the common cold in Asia, and the ability of his body to produce an ungodly amount of constant infected snot. Hey, not everyone's nicknames can be pretty. Sniffles understands this.
Sniffles is me - the omnipresent narrator. My god-given name is Jermaine Dupri. Or Mike Colonna. Either or works. I didn't really add much to the group. I was good for several forms of entertainment - such as when i lost my passport or my constant questioning of - is it beer-30 yet? I take full credit for harming southeast asia by coming up with the idea of having myself & whoever else was willing to ride with me to travel to asia. So when it comes down to it in a court of law, I am willing to take a larger percentage of the blame for how our travels set back certain diplomatic relations anywhere from 20-50 years. If there is another Cold War, i'll claim my bad.
*ZEE GERMANS*
Oh zee germans. I ran into the Germans, sorry, zee Germans while in Nanning, China. I had seen them running to get on to the train in Guangzhou as it was about to slowly creep forward towards Nanning. I noticed them because they were the only white people I saw at the train station. I got excited I would be able to hang out with white people for a while. But they were on a different car.
It was about 5am as I stood in line to buy a ticket from Nanning to the Chinese / Vietnamese border, when Martin approached me & asked if I knew what the hell I was doing in attempting to get to Hanoi. I told him no. He though had, written on a small piece of paper, some chinese characters that theoretically stated, "Please help me get to Hanoi". As that beat anything I had, I decided to roll in their company. Actually, they were just nice enough to let me tag along. And as our trips were remarkably similar, we ended up seeing the majority of Southeast Asia with zee Germans. I already miss hearing German throughout my day.
Although they are a single unit, zee Germans are actually two people. Martin is a 20 year old picture taking machine. He shows no shame, nor any regard for memory cards or battery life, and takes pictures of anything and everything. I'm looking forward to receiving a few CDs filled with his pictures. Martin was incredibly patient. As my years of listening to loud and obnoxious trash-can banging music has caught up with me and permanently damaged my hearing, I learned of Martin's incredible degree of patience. I would guesstimate that for every 2 sentences Martin spoke, I had to ask him to repeat 2 of the sentences directly into my eardrum so my brain had a chance of forming a response. And if you're wondering, despite his accent, the english was excellent. It was just my listening skills that were / are piss-poor.
Zee German #2 = Sabine. Despite my inability to pronounce her name correctly for the first 20 minutes on the train, she & Martin still allowed me to follow in their traveling footsteps. Sabine has a tendency to get injured - she broke her elbow, amongst other injuries. I never even knew that was medically possible. I was also unable to take a photograph of her shoes. There's a story in there, but I cannot necessarily tell you about it. She has stated, on the record, that she has never been in a fight, nor has she ever really been mad. If you're reading this Sabine, there is still $100 U.S. dollars for you if you go up to a random stranger, scream at them in German, punch them in the ear, and then run.
THE ISRAELIS
Oh where do I start with the Israelis. The Israelis are the two individuals to the left of this picture. C is the female and Moshe is the male. If they look much more comfortable with guns than I, it is b/c they just got out of the Israeli army. These were some of the nicest people we met on the trip. They had been traveling for 2 months, and had another 2 in their future.
We met them on the bus ride from Saigon to Cambodia. I was immediately impressed by the Israelis when, as soon as we got off the bus and were quite literally attacked by drivers directing us to get into their tuk-tuks, Moshe fought off the entire tuk-tuk army of cambodia & got us a ride to our hotel for $1. Combined. He used a mix of disarming smiles and stern "i'm really disappointed in you" type looks your mother gives you when you come home drunk as a 19 year old and she finds you passed out with your head hanging in the toilet. Their negotiation skills made Trump look like a pre-Madonna punk bitch.
The first conversation with them revolved around them asking us why we, as Americans, drank so much. We told them we only drank on nights where there were times for celebration. Its just that we, as Americans, found the simple fact that we were alive, well, and breathing, was justification enough for us to drink. It's not our fault that we as Americans are an inherently jovial culture. Once they settled down & shared a few drinks with us, we immediately took a liking to them.
