Where Is Huy?

Where is Huy? In May 2013, I decided to quit my job and do something that I've dreamt of doing for a long time. Here you will find posts of my thoughts and pictures on the road as I backpack around the world for the next 1+ year.

[whereishuy]

I'm back...

... but I've moved.

You can find my travel blog here http://whereishuy.wordpress.com

Bye tumblr! It's been real.

[whereishuy]

I'm Jay from New York

Back at UT I met this Russian girl who graciously informed me that my name, Huy, is a vulgar word for penis in Russian. 

Thanks!

Just to confirm, I decided to fact check through the two most reputable sources I know, Wikipedia and UrbanDictionary. Sure enough, хуй, lovingly means "cock" in Russian.

Thankfully at the time, I never planned on making any diplomatic visits to Russia or the Eastern Bloc, so bullet dodged. Phew.

Fast forward till about three weeks ago.

My friend Luis and I found ourselves in Chișinău, the capital of Moldova in the heart of the Eastern Bloc. Along with a German guy in our hostel, we went out on a night on the town.

As the night wane, a group of Russians came up and talked to us. They're from Moscow and currently live in Chișinău because they do "business" there.

The conversation finally culminated into the dreaded question, "What's your name?"  

Luis says his name. German dude says his name. I turned to my friends and asked, "Shit! What do I say to them?"

"Just tell them your name."

Ok here it goes. My name is Huy.

Then all hell broke loose! No way they said. You know that your name in Russian means --

Yeah I know. 

"We don't believe you. Show us your ID."

I show them my ID and that only further exacerbated things. 

Haha, get your laughs in, but this went on for 15-20 minutes and they just could not let it go. 

Dude if that's the reaction people are going to have about your name, we can't be going around calling you Huy since we're going to be rubbing elbows with mad Russians in KaZantip. We gotta give you a new name.

And that's when Jay was born. Short, simple and an homage to my man HOVA.

Little did I know, Jay from New York would be a rockstar.

The craziest things happened to me in the last few weeks. From our journey through Eastern Europe to partying on the Black Sea with some of the most beautiful women in the world.

The next few entries are going to be tough to write, but I'm going to try my best to put into words the ridiculous escapades that I saw and got myself into. Honestly though, I don't think I could do it or if anyone would actually believe what has happened to me.  

But just a preview.

I woke up, pants down and around my ankles sitting on a public toilet. Barefooted. iPhone gone. Money gone. Hulu Chucks gone. And one sock in my right pocket. 

[whereishuy]

KaZantip Bound

VICE visits the Republic of Kazantip, an annual month-long rave/orgy on the southern coast of the Ukraine.

Currently I'm in Odessa in the Ukraine with my buddy Lou who has met up with me in Budapest and we've spent the last week backpacking through the heart of Eastern Europe on our way to this huge party called KaZantip in the Black Sea.

Check out the video. It's definitely NSFW. It's pretty much the coup de grace of this part of our trip.

It's a two-week long party that some would call a rave on the beach while others would call an orgy. Either way, I'm going to be a little MIA for the next couple of weeks.

I'll post more about the party and our excursions through Eastern Europe in a few weeks.

Right now we're waiting to catch the midnight train from Odessa to Simferopol. We got sleeper cars so that's going to be clutch. We'll be able to sleep and wake up and catch a shuttle to the beach.

If you don't hear back from me, hopefully I've found myself a nice little Eastern European honey and now running a "business" in the Ukraine.

Probably not.

Ciao for now.

[whereishuy]

This is twenty years in the making. 

It all started back when I was eight years old and watching the local Houston nightly news. For some reason FOX's newscast always came on an hour earlier than ABC, NBC or CBS. So for my Houstonians out there, I was watching Mike Barajas throw it down as he always does at 9pm every night. Towards the end of the newscast, they had a segment where they showed a clip of a bunch of people running through the streets wearing white and red and a bunch of bulls are chasing after them. At the time, I was too young to comprehend what was going on but all I remembered was how cool that looked. 

Later on in high school we read Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises. When I said I read it, I meant I SparkNote the hell out of it. And even though I only read the SparkNotes version, at the time, what ol' Ernest was describing sounded oddly familiar to the news clip I saw a fews years earlier. 

Just to confirm, I asked my teacher if this is when they let bulls run through the streets chasing people and everyone is wearing white and red scarfs. 

"Yeah it is. And it happens for a whole week every year." she said. 

EVERY YEAR?!?

Done. I'm doing this. I don't know when, but I'm going to make my way to Pamplona one day and I'm going to run with those bulls. 

Fast forward to the present and my buddy Aaren who lives in London tells me, "My uncle is going to run with the bulls this summer and I think I'm going to do it with him. Wanna do it?"

Dude one of the major points on my backpacking trip is to run with the bulls. It's on the top of my bucket list. 

So we met up in Pamplona along with my buddy Anuj from New York who had met me up earlier in the week in Barcelona. Unfortunately, Anuj had a bum knee so he was a game time decision. 

We opted to not run the first morning we were there and instead watch it to get a feel for the run. Well, it was a little useless since it all happened so fast and there are so many people you could barely see anything. But we decided, the next morning, we're doing this.

So 5:30am comes around and my alarm goes off. The actual run starts at 8am, but you basically have to be in the running area by 6:30am because they start to fence off the area and won't let any more people in. I pop out of my bed and rallied the troops. We put on our all white fatigues adorned with our red scarf and sash. I was so pumped, but my buddy Anuj decided to sit this one out. 

We get to the center around 6:30am and there's drunk people everywhere as we expected. This festival literally goes on for 24-hours a day and there are people that have been up all night drinking and are about to run. That's the main warning that we got from everyone. It's not the bulls you have to worry about, it's the drunk idiots that have been up all night drinking and they're falling everywhere. 

Throughout the last few days, we've been getting advice from everyone and there seems to be a difference in opinion. Do you start before "Dead Man's Corner" or after? Yes there's an area called "Dead Man's Corner" because it's a sharp right turn and that's where most people fall and get trampled. 

We saunter about until we got to the area in front of city hall and decided that this is where we'll make our stand with the bulls. Again, we arrived around 6:30am and the run doesn't start till 8am so the anticipation is killing us. 

There's chatter about strategy amongst the crowd as the police are going through kicking people out left and right who look like they're drunk, have a backpack, a camera and/or don't have appropriate shoes. 

When the clock struck 8, all the bells in the city went off and then for a split second there was dead silent. Then you hear a firecracker go off indicating that the bulls have been set free onto the street and at this moment you hear a lot of commotion going on and definitely at this point the adrenaline is starting to pump. Then a second firecracker goes off to indicate that the last bull has left the corral meaning get your ass ready to run.

People you met while you're waiting that you thought you made friends with immediately become buffers between you and the bulls. Pure chaos ensued and it became every man for themselves. You see guys pushing girls out of the way. It was ridiculous. 

Me being the idiot that I am, decided that I'm going to attempt to capture the run on my iPhone. For a few seconds I got some worthless Blair Witch style footage, but I quickly had to scrap that idea as soon as the bulls were on my tail.

Let me tell you, there's nothing that gets your heart pumping when you hear cowbells and the thuds from half a dozen bulls running right behind you. I immediately pressed up against the wall to let the bulls pass and started running again behind the last bull. 

As I made it to Dead Man's Corner just like clockwork, a mob of people fell in front of me and with all the pushing I tripped up and slammed into the ground as people are just stepping and trampling on me. They say to stay down if you fall, but there was no way I'm going to not finish the run, so I pushed myself up and started to sprint towards the arena. 

Along the way there are shouts of "Are there more?" "I don't know!" "I think there's more behind us" "Keep running!"

As I made it into the arena the scene was something like out of the movie Gladiator. The entire arena was packed and all you could hear are the cheers from the crowd. And just knowing that you finished the run is an unbelievable feeling. 

We celebrated that night with copious amounts of vodka on the rocks. Anuj didn't get a chance to run and he was leaving the next afternoon and it didn't sit well with me for him to fly all the way out to Pamplona and not run. So around 2-3am and many vodka on the rocks later, we thought it'd be a great idea to sleep in the park and get up around 6:30am to run the last leg, so Anuj can at least say he did it. 

Alright awesome great idea!

So we crashed out on a grassy field off the main square while thousands of people around us are drinking and stumbling around drunk.

Then things got a little weird. I had put my wallet in my back right pocket buttoned up and I put my iPhone in my back left pocket also buttoned up. As we were sleeping I felt something tugging my back left pocket. I opened my eyes and there's some guy trying to pull my iPhone out of my pocket. I immediately kicked him and asked him what the hell he was doing. 

His response was, "I'm looking for a machero (lighter)."

What the hell? That's your response?

Whatever. That weirded me out so we got up and walked around. Anuj's knee gave out on him so combined that with the incident on the grass, we scrapped the idea of running in the morning. 

Aaren and I ended up running again when his uncle Bill arrived. After running it the first time, we felt like pros giving advice to everyone. 

We started off at the same spot and this time we had a better feel of what to expect. We waited until we actually saw the bulls behind us before we started running. Everything was going smooth. We turned the corned on Dead Man's Corner and that's where all hell broke loose. 

We heard a blood-curling screamed and then immediately saw a mob of people running back towards us.

What the hell? 

The scene we saw next was gruesome. 

You can watch the footage here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlq62WTGX5g

And some context for you, we were about 15ft from where that was happening. Thank god the guy was alright. 

That bull actually turned around three times during the whole run, but he eventually made it into the arena and was corralled in. 

It was great to have run it again for the second time and ending the festival on a high note. This is truly an amazing festival and I would recommend everyone to check it out. I know we're looking to make this an annual thing and renting out a place for the week. 

Who is in?

[whereishuy]

Anyone who knows me pretty well can attest to my love of street meat after a long night out on the town.

Is this chicken or is this lamb? Doesn't matter it's sooo good. 

Yum yum yum. I love street meat. Street meat street meat street meat.

My last night in Portugal I discovered a delectable cuisine known as bifana. It's basically slices of pork sautéed or stewed and served on a roll with some mustard. I threw back two of these bad boys at the end of the night and I was hooked. 

The next afternoon I had to catch my bus and I realized I haven't had McDonald's yet in Portugal, so I dropped by the MacDo's in this mall next to the bus station and as I perused through the menu, lo and behold the McBifana just jumped out at me. 

Obviously I had to get it. But as I hastily opened up what I thought would be a bundle of joy wrapped in paper was, like most things at MacDo's, a bit of a disappointment. 

Instead of slices of pork steak as I recalled from the night before was replaced with just one thin pork patty. 

I know. I don't know what I was expecting, but needless to say I was pretty bummed out. 

Grade: C+

[whereishuy]

Baader-Meinhof is the phenomenon where one happens upon some obscure piece of information– often an unfamiliar word or name– and soon afterwards encounters the same subject again, often repeatedly. - UrbanDictionary.com

A friend of mine had a going away party in LA back in April while I was in town for work. 

"Where you going?"

"I'm leaving for Spain next week and I'm going to walk across the entire country."

"Hmm. Cool."

To each their own I thought. At the time, I personally would rather have spent a few weeks doing anything other than walking across Spain in the middle of the hot summer. El Camino de Santiago as this trek is known and it was the first time I have even heard of it. But once I landed in Spain, I couldn't seem to NOT hear about it. 

"Oh I've down the Camino."

"Oh meet too!"

"Oh I'm doing it now and this is my fifth time."

Left and right I felt like everyone I met has walked across the entire length of Spain, but me. So after some research, and by research I mean Wikipedia, I discovered that the Camino de Santiago is a Christian pilgrimage that dates back to the medieval times. It's still a Christian pilgrimage for some, but more and more people are just doing it for the experience and the community that comes with it. 

There are many routes that you can take, but all roads lead to the town of Santiago de Compostela. I didn't even know this town existed until on behest of my CouchSurfing host, I was encouraged to check it out.

So... I checked it out. 

I booked a hostel in town for a couple of nights. Now keep in mind that the last two hostels I stayed in were in Portugal so coming to this hostel took me down a few notches. Nothing fancy. Just a bare bones hostel.

What was weird about this particular hostel was that their were more staff members than guests staying at the hostel. During my couple of days, I kid you not, there were only three guests including myself and a couple who had just down the Camino. 

Again, a little strange. Apparently, the owner of the hostel accepts "volunteers" to run the place in exchange for accommodations. What I soon discovered was that the entire volunteer staff were originally guests of the hostel and just parlayed it into a volunteer gig for free room and board. The end product of this is that there are nine volunteers just hanging out all day doing practically nothing. On top of that, there hardly were any guests that came through, especially it being the middle of the summer and there are so many backpackers coming through doing the Camino.

Anywhoo, the final destination of the Camino is the this old medieval cathedral called, shockingly, The Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela. It's a pretty impressive cathedral with levels of detail I haven't seen in any other cathedral I've been to.

After talking to a few backpackers who have done the Camino, I've come to take it as an experience you should definitely do at least once in your life. 

Well, that gives me another reason to come back to Spain.

[whereishuy]

Surf's Up

As I mentioned in a previous post, northern Spain consists of a lot of smaller towns that are a bit off the beaten path, so hostels aren't too common in these parts. There are hotels sure, but they're a bit pricier and they're not going to be able to give me the opportunity to meet people.

I'm not particularly new to CouchSurfing. I've had an account on this bad boy for awhile, but I've actually never surfed before. And what better way to start than on this trip. 

While posting up in Porto, I decided afterwards I'll hit up the town of Vigo in the area of Galicia in Spain. I sent a messages to 20-30 or so CouchSurfing hosts in the town hoping that someone could put me up. A couple of days went by and I either got a flat 'no' or no response. 

Hmm... ok I get it. I don't have a lot of recommendations from other CouchSurfers so I understand the hesitation from potential hosts.

It started to feel like trying to apply and get the interview for that first job. They want someone with experience, but how do you get that experience if no one wants to give you a shot?

A catch-22. 

So I decided to Google "tips on writing the perfect CouchSurfing request." Hey I was getting a little desperate. I soon discovered that in recent years, CouchSurfing has degenerated a little into "SexSurfing". Basically people are starting to use it as a hookup site. Guys won't respond to you if you're a dude. And girls won't respond to you unless you have a few positive references from past CouchSurfing hosts. I read through some horror stories about some hosts implying or making moves on their guests and viceversa.

Well shoot. That puts me in a pickle. But I decided to not give up and kept trying to secure myself a host. There still has to still be some genuine and optimistic people out there willing to host a wayfaring traveler. 

Then lo and behold I get a reply from this lovely lady, Olalla.

"I work early in the morning and don't come home till late in the evening, but you're more than welcome to crash at my place."

Not ideal, but I'll take it. We exchange WhatsApp numbers and kept in regular touch for the next day or so before I left on the bus due north. 

My bus arrives into Vigo later than I originally told her so I hastily scrambled to get to her place as fast as I can. By the time I arrived at her door it was nearing 11pm at night, but we're in Spain and people are just now eating dinner... right?

Around the corner is a bar that had a WiFi sticker on the door so I asked to use the WiFi. I checked to see if there were any messages from her and there were none, so I shot her a few messages on WhatsApp to let her know that I'm here and that I'm around the area. 

No replies. 

Alright now the staff is starting to stack the chairs around me giving me the subtle hint to get the hell out. 

It's about midnight now, so I decided what the hell I'll just sleep in front of her building and figure it out in the morning. As I'm walking up to her door she comes from around the other corner.

Olalla?

Huy?

After the exchange of "sorries" and "oh no don't worry I just got here" we went inside. Her "friend" Juan also came up after parking his car. She said he would also being staying over, but in her room. 

Cool.

Juan comes in and immediately takes off his shirt and drops down to his shorts.

Cool. Europeans. Totally get it. 

Juan was a bit of an intimidating character. He was tall and had a little bit of crazy eyes. He started rolling cigarettes and hand them to me and then we started to talk about the economic crisis in Spain and he explained why Communism failed in the Soviet Union while using an analogy about farming marijuana.

I guess Olalla had him over to size me up and see if I was safe to have over. I passed. 

I woke up the next morning to a strange ringing sound. Juan storms out of the room naked and picks up his phone which was what was ringing.

"Hola Huy!" he waves to me as he's talking on the phone... naked.

"Hola Juan!" I replied as my head hit the pillow. 

Then he proceeded to make me coffee on the stove, got dressed and wished me luck on my trip as he won't see me that night because his son was staying over. 

That night, Olalla and I had drinks at her local spot which was ran by an Irish guy that was born and raised in Manchester, but now was living in Vigo and oh yeah he plays the banjo.

It was also my last night so we stayed up throwing back beers and some homemade moonshine this bartender brewed in his home. We talked about traveling and music. My two favorite things. We crashed out pretty late even when Olalla had to work in the morning.

She bounced out early but left me a flash drive with all her music.

Bad ass.

All in all, it was a great experience and I would later travel on to Gijon and CouchSurf with this guy named Pablo who also looked like Stiffler from American Pie. 

[whereishuy]

Vigo, Islas Cies, España

[whereishuy]

The Conquest of Spain and Other Things

You can't rock a fedora, sunglasses, an Ed Hardy shirt and a cane into a club. Pick one douchey item and toss out the other three at the door. Then in the morning, burn the item you've selected. That's the memory that stood out most for me after coming home from a boat party on the Seine River in Paris.

It's been over two weeks since my last entry and I apologize for the lack of updates. While backpacking through the north of Spain I got pretty ill from the traveling and then a couple of buddies met me up in Barcelona and Pamplona which led to a bender that lasted over a week. 

I made it to Paris on Sunday and am currently crashing with my cousin Thierry. It's been awhile and it's great to be back in Paris to see the fam as well being able to eat anywhere and know it will be good. The food in Spain was hit or miss and a majority of the time it was mediocre at best. But, the hits were incredibly exceptional.

When I arrived on Sunday, it also happened to be Bastille Day which is the equivalent to our July 4th, except the French aren't back-to-back World War Champs. There were a ton of boat parties that were going on the Seine, hence why I was at a boat party on a Sunday night.

Picking up where I last left off. After leaving Portugal I headed back into Spain with the plan to backpack across the north of Spain until I get to Pamplona for the Festival of San Fermin or to some, running of the bulls. 

The north of Spain consists a lot of small towns that are no so touristy, so a lot of these towns do not have hostels for me to hit up. Instead, I opted to try out CouchSurfing. I'll go into more detail about my CouchSurfing experience in a later entry, but for you all of you who don't know, CouchSurfing.org is a place where travelers can create an account and find hosts in certain cities in the world who would host them for a few nights. It's a pretty genius idea. You get put up for free and it's a unique opportunity to get a feel for a city from a local's perspective. This works vice-versa as well and you can log on and find people who are coming through to your town to host if you have room at your place. Think of it as hitchhiking, but you're going to someone's house and they could kill you in private and bury the body in the backyard instead of leaving it in the trunk. Just kidding. Only a little.

In a span of about three weeks, I went from Porto -> Vigo -> Santiago de Compostela -> Gijon -> Oviedo -> Bilbao -> Barcelona -> Pamplona -> Paris

I did a great deal of damage in Spain and between this trip to Spain and my previous one, I've seen a good part of the country except for Andalusia in the south. That, I will probably have to come back for.

Nearly a month of my trip have been spent in Spain. Mainly the reason for such a long stay in this country is because of the need to kill some time while I backpacked my way to Pamplona to run with the bulls (more on this in a later entry). What I discovered in the end is a rich country with a rich history and whether you're rich or poor, people love to get down and party. There's absolutely no place I've been to that party as hard as Spain. Dinner time is typically at 10:30pm at the earliest with some clubs not opening their doors until 2am. Coming home around 8am after leaving the club and having breakfast is completely normal. 

Spain never was on my list of places that I MUST SEE. What originally started as a visit to see my friend Alex who lives in Madrid nearly two years, has turned into an itch that I can't seem to scratch. And I totally understand why people find the need to keep trying to scratch that itch.

[whereishuy]

That awkward moment...

when you're the only Asian person at some random field party in the north of Spain and Gangnam Style comes on and everyone immediately looks at you.

[whereishuy]

Roller Coaster

Traveling is a serious roller coaster ride.

You meet some great people at your hostel or wherever you're at. You guys go out have a good time and bond. Then the next thing you know, they're gone the next day heading to their next destination and the next batch of travelers arrive and you repeat. 

Oh and it doesn't help when you wake up to that reality after a long night of drinking. 

The highs are really really high and the lows can leave you pretty lonely.  I guess I'm hitting my lull at the moment, but would I want it any other way? Hell no! Like I said you meet GREAT people, everything is always new and could you imagine all the weird shit I've seen?!?

[whereishuy]

MacDo Series: Salamanca, Spain

During my pitstop in Salamanca, I dropped by the MacDo's off the main square. Its was a pretty fancy McDonald's with a nice store front that had these old columns to to fit into the rest of the old town. 

They had a burger called the 1955 which I'm not 100% sure if it's a local burger, but it was the only burger that we didn't have in the States. 1955 being an homage to when McDonald's started way back when. 

Basically this was a sirloin burger with lettuce, tomato, Spanish bacon, ketchup and special sauce on a sesame seed bun. 

I don't know what it is with the international burgers having multiple sauce on a burger, but with the 1955 they made it work. It was actually pretty good. The meat actually tasted like meat and somewhat fresh. 

Grade: B+

[whereishuy]

A friend of mine once told me that Portugal has the hostel game on lockdown. That made no sense to me until I actually went to Portugal and saw it for myself.

I'm a big fan of hostels. It's a great way to travel on the cheap and meet really cool people. Needless to say, I've stayed at some of the best hostels and some of the absolutely stink holes. 

I can truly say that the best hostel I've ever stayed at is Lisboa Central Hostel.

Really I don't need much. A bed, a clean bathroom and a common area to meet people. That's it. Lisboa Central Hostel took those basic requirements and put it on steroids and added other bells and whistles. The beds were so comfortable and the bathrooms were immaculate. But what really made this hostel stand out is the staff. They were unbelievably  friendly and helpful. When I arrived, the staff at Lisboa Central were the first people I met and they made me feel so welcomed to their city and country. Having a great hostel staff that is friendly is so crucial in creating an environment that is conducive to meeting people.

For breakfast they made me pancakes (crepes) and in the evening they made me soup. What the heck!?

Thanks Ana, Joana, Tomás, Richard, Odete and Carlos!

http://www.lisboacentralhostel.com

[whereishuy]

Porto, Portugal

[whereishuy]

Festa de São João do Porto

Last night was the biggest festival of the year for Porto. It celebrates the city's patron saint, São João aka San Juan aka Saint John.

Basically the entire town is on the streets banging each other... with these plastic hammers that make a squeaking noise as you bang people. 

At midnight everyone goes down to the river to catch this sick firework show (video to come). As you're walking down there are swarms of people on the street and random people would just hit you on the head with the hammer. And this went on all night. 

Somewhere along the night, our group somehow convinced a mob of people to create a gauntlet about 25 yards long on the bank of the river and forced people to take the walk of shame while getting bang in order to pass. 

Things got weird. Somewhere along the night shots were taken and we ended up in a dark basement at some electro rock club. 

Porto are you ready?!?!

After a great night, I'm saying goodbye to Portugal today and heading back to Spain starting off in Galicia and backpacking my way towards Pamplona for the Running of the Bulls. And yes I am running.

[whereishuy]

Currently I'm in Porto and I meant to put this post about Lisbon up earlier, but the internet here in my hostel is a bit spotty and I finally have some down time to actually try to figure everything out.

I arrived in Lisbon early in the morning after taking a 1am train from Salamanca. In my head I'm thinking, hey if it's a 1am train, it must be a sleeper car. 

Wrong

Not only was it NOT a sleeper train, the seats did not recline back at all. Then mixed that in with the multiple stops that the train made and the ticket collector coming around every few hours, sleep was a fantasy.

Regardless, I arrived. It was too early for me to check-in, so I dropped off my bags and went on this free walking tour. My go-to move has been to hit up these free walking tours done by a local and have them take me around to all the main spots to see in the city while giving me a local's view of the city. Our guide was this guy named Rafael who has this really flamboyant personality with a gift for dramatic timing that really made the tour awesome. Probably one of the best walking tour I have ever been on.

The highlight of the tour has to be walking through the oldest neighborhood in the city which was called Alfama. It literally was a small village inside this major city. Even though I've never been in a favela in Brazil, but the Rafael said it was similar to that but a whole lot safer. Everyone knew each other and each other's business. The drink of Lisbon is called jininha which I still am not sure what it is, but it's pretty strong and slightly sweet. As we're walking through Alfama, Rafael introduced us to this grandma that was selling jininha out of her apartment. She had the windows opened with a sign above it like a lemonade stand. We order a round and she literally turned around, opened up her fridge and pulled out a jug and poured us a round. It was good, but I probably won't drink it again.

Portugal has never been on my list of top destinations to visit, but with Lisbon being my first taste of the country, it has completely blown me away. The people are incredibly friendly, more so than any other country I've visited. I've absolutely fallen in love with this country. 

[whereishuy]

Drug Dealers

Drug dealers are shady. Surprise!

Since I've been in Lisbon, I've been solicited by a drug dealer seeing if I wanted to buy some weed and/or hash every day as I'm walking around the city.

Their go to move is the ol' flash the goods in their hand at you with a smile. Now I should also point out that when they flash the goods, they're doing so in front of their crotch area. 

Two problems:

1. Most people are not trying to score while taking pictures of a 500 year old church.

2. Most people don't want to buy anything you flash at them within a few centimeters of your crotch.

Last night I went out with an Australian couple that are staying at the hostel I'm staying at. The Australian guy was meeting up with a Portugese buddy of his that he used to live with in London. Let's call the Portugese guy J. 

J was a cool dude who rocked a pretty well-coiffed moustache. He, like most young people in Portugal, is all about the hustle, which I can't knock, but I'm not gonna lie, he gave me a weird shady feeling.

We walk down to the water with some 40's of beer and drank it on this park while we waited for some of J's buddies to meet us up. As we're drinking, a big guy comes up to us and pulls J aside and starts speaking with him in Portugese.

All awhile, two guys come up asking us if we want to buy some hash in which we politely replied back with "No thank you" in Portugese "Não obrigado". The guy holding the goods got a little angry at me and says something along the lines of "I'm not a gypsy. The shit I sell is good". We all politely replied back cordially reiterating we did not want to buy hash and tried to get J to come back, but the big guy kept him occupied. 

By this time, the other guy pulls out a deck of cards and aggressively tried to get us to play a card game with him which we again tried get J to come back and tell these guys we don't want drugs or to play cards.

As this was going down, another guy pulls up on a bicycle and started to circle around us. This dude on the bike looked mean as hell and kept mean mugging us. Now I've seen HBO's The Wire many times and so by this point I know I should start sweating.

So. I started sweating. These fools got even more aggressive. 

Luckily it started drizzling giving us the opportunity to walk away without looking like we're just running away from them. The only problem was that the big guy kept following J and us. He bummed a cigarette from us and since we trying to play it cool and stay friendly, we indulged him. Then he bummed another and another. By this time it was getting annoying and J insists on staying to wait for his other friends which we obviously see they were flaking on him.

We had to pull the rip cord, so we gave J the "Hey we'll call you later to see where you're at and we'll meet up" and then bounced.

Needless to say, we ended the night throwing back copious amounts of beer and talked about religion and politics as one would normally do with people they've just met a few hours earlier.