- 11 dress shirts
- 3 Italian wool/ silk-lined suits
- 16 tie/ cuff link/ handkerchief sets
- 1 dress pant
- 1 blazer
- 1 pea-coat
- 3 dress shoes
- 2 sneakers (1 has my name stitched on the heel)
- 4 jeans (for which we designed the back-pocket stitching... I got a ghetto-blaster with my initials in the speakers, and for Bradon I drew a pair of headphones, the chords wrapping over to the other side forming his initials)
And it was all totally custom tailored. For the shoes we printed pics off the net & chose colors, designs etc... Bradon got a pair of Nike Air Force-Ones & he was like “OK, I want the swoosh to be black, the tongue red, this portion white, that portion red, this portion black, the soles white, & a red velcro strap riiiiiight here” & the cobbler made just that & they fit him perfectly. Everything cost me US$1,000, shipping included.
Alice & Lizzi (the 2 great Aussie girls who joined us throughout Vietnam) ordered a similar quantity of clothing. They accompanied their tailors to the market to pick out fabric, and the total raw material cost was US$7: if anything didn't fit perfectly, we sent it back to be remade or refitted whatever; we could be ruthless because we knew we were paying a relative fortune.
1 day we rented scooters with a group of travelers. Among them was a Marine from San Diego named Ronnie. His story is incredible, here's the cliffnotes:
He got shot in Iraq; consequently, the government paid him a bunch of money and sent him home. 'Awakened,' he decides to sail around the world and buys a boat. In the middle of the Pacific he's overtaken by a nasty storm: radios Hawaii coast guard but they say he's too remote for assistance, so he just holds tight. The rudder breaks off so he's stranded out there. The storm passes and he's picked up by a cargo ship bound for China. In Shanghai he buys a bicycle and decides to ride to the U.K. ... China to Vietnam, across Cambodia, through Thailand... India, Iraq, Turkey, Europe, and finally London, camping most of the way. Incredible. His blog is interesting and apparently getting published soon so check it out: www.openbluehorizon.com
Anyways, we rode to the Mee Son ruins and it took 1½ amazing hours to get there...
And the glory....
When we returned to town, I cruised around by myself for an hour. I drove past a schoolyard and saw these kids breakdancing, They were no older than 13, amazing, no music just 2 groups of friends battling. Watch this video all the way through, it gets gnarlier and gnarlier:
That night we went to a legendary drinking hole called Happy King Kong Bar. Between 10 & 11pm they serve free rum I guess as a marketing ploy, but it didn't work and nobody bought anything, we just drank free drink after free drink... whatever Vietnam I love you. To get there, you walk along a river, cross an old bridge, down a seedy dirt road... about 1 kilometer total but you hear the music from the bridge. It was the grimiest place we'd ever been, but we had fun tagging the walls and drinking for free!
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