Planet Goon (then returning to Planet Saigon)

Wow! 2 months since my last blog! I'm getting lazy. I've had a crazy couple of months with the randomist stuff happening.

This is the order of events as I will tell them now!

1) My friend's farm/rave wedding to a Vietnamese girl
2) Going to the Land of Oz - via Singapore
3) Returning to Vietnam and being met by crazyness (of course)

Ok so number 1 on my list. The most random wedding I have ever been to in my life, and I've been to alot of weddings!

Matt, who ran the AK Hideaway, decided it was time to get married and who would be a better candidate that a hot Vietnamese girly that used to work for him! (not even the random part)

So we all pile onto a minibus at 2am to get to a town 5 hours away literally IN THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE for the wedding at 8 am!!!! Who has a wedding at this time???? We rock up at this strange "hotel" to get changed into wedding gear. It wasn't a hotel - it was a brothel. Red light bulbs in the rooms...brothel.

We arrive at the wedding location - a farm - and get ushered to sit under a canopy in 50 degree heat. My table were all sitting down having a chat and we notice a huddle around the house so I go and have a look and AK Matt's there giving fruit and shots of rice wine to the family members around the table. He then takes ages trying to put earrings in his wife-to-be's ears. All normal weddingy stuff I guessed. I sat back down and around 15 minutes later AK Matt emerges and says 'so I'm married then'.


























What? We'd missed the wedding? Apparently the fruit, rice wine and earring were the wedding. No 'I do's' no kissing the bride. Just they're married. This is when it got a little crazier. it was 8.30am by now and food that could have been dinner was brought out! YUMMY! I was starving. The last thing I'd eaten were m&m's at about 4am.

Then the rave began. And I'm not even over exaggerating when I say rave. This family weren't the richest of families but my god. They must have spent aroud 90% of the wedding budget on the speakers. They were immense. Blaring out Vietnamese at a million decibels was all fun and dandy for about 5 minutes. Thank god Pete and his laptop took over and danced the morning away to some good old rap music.

We were all obviously hammered by 11am because beer was pretty much free flowing as well as the rice wine! The time came for me to pee and I was not prepared for the toilet, or lack of. Basically you walk into a wooden cubicle in the KITCHEN. And piss on the floor. you wash it away with a scoop of water from the pot that you wash your hands in. AWESOME. God knows what happens if you need a poo.








Even funnier I was speaking to Tom about the toilet a little later about how we have to pee on the floor and Tom was like "What?"
"You know Tom, there's no toilet."
"What about the pot?"
I looked confused then clicked.
"The pot that you wash your hands in?"
"Ohhh you wash your hands in it? I thought it was the toilet!"

Everybody at the wedding had washed their hands in Toms piss. GOOD TIMES.

So the wedding started dying down around 2pm so it was time to leave and embark on our wonderful journey back to Saigon. The driver must have loved it. 14 people all passed out for 5 hours. Silence.