posted
Ok, I’m finally breaking down and typing them. However, only one at a time. Shigosei had asked me about this when I visited her this past February, and I kept trying to figure out how I could safely do this. Then I figured, that’s half the fun.
So*, Come one, come all. Take a seat by my side and hear of tales of far yonder, and some not so far.
We shall start with a tail (tale) of when I was in Thailand. I was deployed with the USS Carl Vinson for their 2001 to 2002 6 month deployment. After we had successfully beaten the submarines at war games (a rare thing for aircraft carriers) we visited the city of Pattaya Beach, Thailand for about 5 days. My friend Ken and I had the first two days off, and every one that didn’t have duty the next day had overnight liberty. Mind you that Pattaya does not have a pier that a ship can tie up too. Therefore, we have to take a liberty boat in. Usually it is whatever the locals can provide (and the Navy pays a lot of money for it). The liberty boats pick us up at the ship and take us to a rickety wooden dock which is full of locals waving, smiling, and generally just trying to get whatever money they can. Ken and I of course did not use the money exchangers that came onboard ship. After all, why carry a wad of cash on a ship? After finding an ATM, we set off in search of friendly bar. Oh sure, the MWR program had all sorts of trips planned that we could’ve participated in. However, most of those got cancelled.
It did not take long to find yonder friendly bar. We were called over to an open bar by a nice group of ladies of the night. They only served Heineken, but if you drank like Ken and I did then it didn’t matter. We commenced to try and drink every bottle of beer the bar had. We would’ve been successful too, if we hadn’t started getting hungry. So after losing another game of Connect-4, we left with two of our new friends in search of dinner. I remember it being a nice dinner, I think I had duck. The rest of the evening went as should be easy to guess. I will not go so far as to write it.
The next day we dropped Yupin and Nok off at the bar they worked at after we went and had some breakfast. The next couple of hours we caroused the town in search of souvenirs. Talk about haggling. We learned how to become pretty decent at it. After a few hours we went back to get our drunk on, and then we headed back to the ship.
Skip the duty day because those are almost never all that interesting.
Yeah, two more days in port. This time Ken and I grabbed a friend of ours that works on the diesels. We had a few drinks to start the day and then we split up. The plan was to meet up at the bar several hours later to compare stories. I met up with Yupin again and we decided to make it a short day at the bar. After getting a hotel room we washed up and headed out to an entertainment venue. I was quite surprised at the place. Most of the town didn’t really look all that great, but this building looked like they gave a rat’s rear about how it looked. After paying to go in we ordered our drinks and sat at one of the tables. They had two groups playing there that night. One led by a male vocalist, the other led by a female vocalist. Of course the background dancers were the opposite gender of the lead singer. Outside of the fact that I couldn’t understand a word they said (and that it was techno music) they were pretty entertaining. We left about 2 hours later to go back to the bar. We met up with my two friends and we all started to drink some more.
I finally figured out that if I played Jenga I wouldn’t have to buy the girls drinks as much. Since we played for drinks, if I lost I bought them a drink and vice verse. It didn’t take too long to figure out that my hand was still steadier than theirs after quite a few drinks. While I was sitting there Yupin asks if she can have some money to buy food from one of the sidewalk vendors. Ok, sure. She comes back and asks if I want the other grasshopper. Not ever having grasshopper before I really can’t say that I don’t like it. I’ll say that they are almost tasteless, but really crunchy. We continued to drink with a couple from Britain, two guys from Germany, and a few from Australia.
We split up again and I went back to the motel with Yupin after stopping for dinner. <Insert portion here that is obvious>.
The next day before I went back to the ship Yupin and I went shopping. Along the way we stopped at a little roadside prayer thingy. I don’t remember what it is called but she wanted to say a few prayers at it so I just stepped back a few and watched the beach. We continued the rest of the way to the rickety dock. When we stopped at the bar on the way Yupin and Nok both gave me two glass cups. One for me and one for Ken. I still have mine it has different positions for the different zodiac signs.
I know this story is a bit dry. I can’t post ALL that transpired. I’ll just say that I had the time of my life over there. I have some other stories that are much better, but I thought I'd start with my first port of call then go from there.
posted
Stan, just hoped you were as protected as possible during those un-postable interludes. Thai rates extremely high on HIV, especially their women of negotiable virtue.
Wrap that rascal before you let him out to play.
Posts: 11895 | Registered: Apr 2002
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posted
Never leave home w/o it (literally). I hope to get some more of these sea stories out in the future as Shigosei thought it'd be a good idea. I agree, but I have to way edit some of them. Therefore it makes them hard to write. Some others I am debating to do at all. They are kind of incriminating.
Posts: 2208 | Registered: Feb 2004
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posted
The ones you told me were more about what you did on the ship, as I recall. I remember you said something about messing with someone's head over the radio and getting busted for it. That was a pretty amusing story.
Posts: 3546 | Registered: Jul 2002
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