Chicago here we come...

You know how people say its not what you know but who you know? True. Me knowing someone in a significant position and perhaps some luck in the current position I am in has allowed me a trip to the US for the next 4 weeks as of Friday. I won't go in to too much detail, mainly because I don't know much of the details, but lets just say that this whole overseas thing has opened up doors that would have never even be thought of back home. True again that I'm really yet to establish myself here in Shanghai despite of all these "doors", but its definitely something that I won't be forgetting for the rest of my life. So I guess the next post will be from the country of stars and stripes. I've never had much ambition to go to the states, but surely am looking forward to it.

Before I close this one off, here are a couple of songs that you might want to check out.

House tunes or dance tunes are often remakes. Some guy/girl stealing a 16 bar riff from a song written 20 years ago. There are those who do it well and those who are just boring. What you can be sure of though is that if the new release song was a hit, then the old one would be sheer genius. These songs have been stolen by various artists over the years, check them out. See if you recognise them in their original form.

1. Midnight Ryeders - Evil Vibrations (AWESOME track)
2. George Duke - I love you more (Cheesy as ALL hell, but that riff is great.)
3. Bolivar - Merengue
4. Taana Gardner - Heartbeat (little harder to tell what song stole the beat.)
5. Diana Ross - I'm coming out (suspicious title but you definitely recognise it and its damn funky)

Let me know if you want the names of the remixed songs...

South East Asia - Vietnam & the Malaysian gay community.

Last time I left the SE asia story we were in Cambodia. The last night there was drunk. We ended up drinking with a couple Canadian and English. They were pretty funny. However the next morning we almost missed our bus. 5:30 we get a slamming on the door telling us bus was ready to go! So after being ripped off for the room and tab for drinks (I swear we didn't drink that much, honest!) We scrambled on to the bus headed for Ho Chi Minh.

Vietnam was nice. It was cleaner than Cambodia and people seemed nicer. Both Cambodia and Vietnam work in US dollars. Better to use the local currency but travelling like we were it was easier to just carry the one currency. Our guest house was $12 US a night and was clean WITH A/C. Upon arrival we booked a tour the next day for the Mekong.
Turtle, Pheonix, Dragon, Unicorn. No its not some Captain Planet summoning spell. These were the 4 main islands that we visited on the tour.
Dragon was about fruit markets with LOADS of tropical fruits and that includes the king of fruits - Durian (Sorry its hard to see but its the green things in the baskets).
For those who don't know, its been described to smell like hell and taste like heaven.
Turtle was a Longan farm, we had lunch here (pretty average really).
Unicorn was a coconut island. There we had some coconut candy and bought this $1US bananna moonshine. Heavy stuff.
Pheonix was a canal ride with 2 really old ladies doing all the rowing. Felt kinda bad. They went non-stop for a couple of kilometres.

That night we to the local markets back at Ho Chi Minh for some bargains. Picked up some stuff for a friend here in Shanghai who has helped us enormously. I ate some coconut prawns which was pretty tasty. (The previous night we had PHO.) Then it was clubbing! We went to a place called Apocolypse Now. It was alright. The vietnamese girls are quite pretty. But the shocking part night was, aside from the music, the malaysian guys we had met from our Mekong tour. You see they were there too and had seen us walk in. A friendly wave later we found ourselves standing at their table surround by a bunch of guys who were into well, guys. I didn't really have a problem cos it was pretty funny. I wasn't sure of it until one of them started telling me that I should hang around a couple more days for the mardigra. I said in the exact words, "but I'm not gay." In hindsight is should have said "But I not gay wan!"

We found our way back via a tricycle that had seats in front with some old guy pedaling at the back. Now in our slightly intoxicated state, Lyndon decided he was going to do the riding for the guy. So there I was sitting wedged in this seat with this guy while Lyndon pedaled us to sure death. He kept veering into traffic, which was halarious at the time. Ofcourse we long rode past our hotel when we decided to get off. It all worked out because we found an all night Pho shop! Only problem was that we didn't have enough money for 2 bowls. So we had to share. I love spicy food so it HAD to be the spicy Pho. This was maybe the nicest Pho I'd EVER eaten. Well it was at least until I couldn't feel the insides of my mouth cos there was so much chilli in there.

It was shortly back to bed and ready ourselves for the trip back across cambodia in search for the beaches of Thailand and the Full Moon Festival. I'd had enough of cities and wanted large bodies of water.

Our next stop, Thailand Koh Phangan. Full Moon Party March '06. The promise of thousands of people on the one beach partying for 48 hours.

Still Groovin'?

So previously I gave you some of my personal song recommendations. Don't know whether anyone listened to them but I'll keep going with it anyway. This time we are going to take a more modern approach. Dimitri from Paris is one of the great DJs of our time. Not only does he DJ well technically, but he knows what music is about. The soul, the groove. His speciality is disco edits. The frenchman has quite a skill in finding gold amongst the one hit wonders and well... crap that formed the Disco era. He then adds his own little touches, lifts the kick (beat), EQs it, drops a few filters and effects and TA DA!!!! Most importantly though, he manages to do this while still leaving the essence of the songs untouched. I've made it sound a little easier than it is so don't under estimate the man's talents. Savvy Bar about 3 years ago, I had the pleasure of listening to one of his sets. This was not long after his "A night after the Playboy Mansion" release. Needless to say he was mind blowing.

His albums include

1996 Sacrebleu

1997 -Monsieur Dimitri's De-Luxe House of Funk

2000 - A night at the Playboy Mansion

2000 - Disco Forever

2001 - My Salsoul

2002 - A night After the Playboy Mansion

2003 - Cruising Attitude

2004 - In the House

2006 - Super Disco Friends 2006 - In the house of Love Honestly I haven't heard them ALL yet. But its probably a pretty safe bet if you are into your vocal house, disco or even french house. If you don't know him already then check it out.

Our TV...

Here is a picture our our tv in our lounge room... its a toshiba rear projection. Its huge.... just see for yourself... I thought it was worth an entire post of its own...

Jia You!! Jia You!!!

JIA YOU!! JIA YOU!! Thats what chinese say when they are cheering a team on. So when Yao Ming is playing or when you see table tennis matches on the CCTV's sports channel thats what you hear. Not "CARRNN THE CROWS!!!" its "JIA YOU!!! JIA YOU!!!"

So in light of the Crows first win of their 2006 Premiership season..

JIA YOU CROWS!! JIA YOU CROWS!!!

In case you haven't noticed, we have managed to find Crows games on the internet. Ahhh.... the internet. Back to it then... JIA YOU! JIA YOU!!

BLOG IS BACK!!!!......

The blog is back.. don't ask how... don't ask why. Anyway I've moved my posts from the other site here. There are photos up at the other site, so I may just still use it unless I can find another way of hosting a photo album for free. Well, carry on then.....

So we arrived in Angkor Wat at maybe 11pm at night. The bus driver was obviously told to drive to a specific guest house, which I'm sure he got a cut for. So what would you do? Get off the bus after a slaughtering ride and you are standing right outside a guest house. Its late, there are freakin mosquitos everywhere and it hot...

Our room was alright. Not really much to look at. All we knew was it had 2 beds and a toilet. I presume it the same at every guest house around the area, but there were scooter drivers waiting on the ground looking to strike a deal with you. Our guy, who was for some reason named Sunrise, was pretty cool. He spoke enough english and seemed like an alright guy. Of the choices of tours 1, 2 or 3 day tours, we thankfully took the 1 day option. This of couse meant covering quite an area. All together I think there are 9 main temple sights to visit. Each unique and enormous. So CRACK OF DAWN, 5:30am we were woken up by our driver Sunrise, no pun intended, and his mate (Doch). The area where the temples were locate was national park and entry was $20US to get in! Of course Sunrise was omitted this in his sales pitch the night before.

Sunrise at Angkor Wat - the main temple was quite amazing. It was shit early and there were hundreds of people around all waiting for their kodak moment. After that it was off to Bayon (another temple). I guess the names don't mean much to you guys, actually to be honest they don't mean much to me either. You see we were on a self guided tour, meaning we were tightarsed. So we didn't get many facts or figures, but the place is big. Its huge. And every last bit of it is made from stone of some kind. Different temples were made from different materials. And its all so detailed. Walls are carved with patterns, there are buddah faces everywhere and theres just so much of it.

So we went from temple to temple for the ENTIRE DAY. Climbing UP and DOWN stairs some of which were greater than a 45degree slope. Seriously. Any still there are hundreds of people including crazy middle age japanese ladies climbing it. We covered 7 of the 9 temples which was nuts. We had walkded so much on so little sleep that we asked to head back to the guest house for a power nap before carrying on. But it was worth it. Its gotta be done. I can sit here and try and describe the grandure of it all, but you have to see it to believe it.

That night we had dinner with our drivers. We said to take us to a local place for food. The guest house served food but it was expensive and even Sunrise wasn't sure what it was like. Loc Lark. Thats the name of the dish. It was stewed pork served with a fried egg.. sunny side up. Doesn't sound like much but it was fantastic. We ended up walking the streets after dinner. (Apparently thats not a safe thing to do. Good thing I know kung fu...)

We were out of there the next day. Headed for Phenon Phen. There we stayed at a Lakeside guest house. Now before I left, I had come vaccinations, including Yellow Fever. (inside joke..) What I opted out on was malaria tablets. You just had to keep taking those things. So the doctor said you should be fine just stay away from large bodies of fresh water. Lakeside guest house it was, didn't really make the connection at the time we checked in. That same day we visited the War crimes museum. Its a former school which had been turned into a prison. Anywhere up to 5000 people were in this tiny place. We walked around ourselves and it was just erie. Hard to describe, but the air was thick. Didn't smell of anything in particular, just thick. Everything was so still and you just couldn't smile the whole time you were there. There were beds that people had obviously died on with photos of their bodies on the walls. It was 4 3 story buildings that had about 4 or 5 classrooms on each floor. Some rooms were left for mass detention while other were split into smaller holding cells. Either way they all had the same feeling. At the end there was a video interviewing some guy who was actually there. He tell a story of being forced to club people in the back of the head so they and how soildiers tied children to trees and beat them to death. Not cool. I'm glad I went but sorry to see what it was all about.

Next Blog: Vietnam and the Malaysian gay community.

BLOG moved!!!

Hey all,

Ok there seems to be some firewall or proxy filtering on my side. The result is me not being able to see my blog. I'm able to post up stuff... but can view it. So its moving. The new blog address is digthatgroove.blog.com

The next post is up there.
Cheers