Ho Chi Minh Trip Report

Right, time for a post about Ho Chi Minh, mmmm where do i start? Errrr, first up its worth mentioning that i was basically multai in Vietnam :) I thought the prices for stuff in Thailand were very inexpensive but fk me, the cost of living in this city was just LOL, it was seriously cheap! One solitary English pound is equivalent to almost 34,000 Vietnamese Dong which meant i was a billionaire for five days babay, weeee!

We stayed at a decent 4* hotel called the Catina for 30 nugs a night which was pretty expensive for this part of the world. Once we arrived we quickly dumped our gear off and went out to explore some of the city. The first thing that immediately struck us was the difficulty we were faced with in just crossing the road. There are almost no traffic lights in Ho Chi Minh and the roads are absolutely jam packed full of scootays. Here's a comedy vid of me playing Human Frogger, remember that game?






After having abit of a mince around the place it quickly got dark and we went for munch at some gaff near our hotel. We both ordered three course meals obviously at a stupidly redic cheap prices although we had endure this fkin annoying beggar girl that resembled a ghost. Honestly she looked really spooky and stood in front us for a good couple of minutes one arm out stretched with the other carrying a baby whilst repeatably uttering the words ohhhh my baby i'm very hungry or something to that affect. It was proper disturbing and she looked/sounded really ghoulish. Oh, the other thing about this place is that while your onomnomnoming on your first course they bring out the other fooking dishes before you have even finished! That was often the case for a few places we ate in actually and sometimes they don't even bring the grub out in the right order and you end up with all three courses lined up in front of you.

On our first full day we ended up jumping on these Cyclo things which resemble big fk off wheel chairs that the local Vietnamese blokes peddle you around in. First off, a couple of these Cyclo fish took us to some horrible cafe where we got some grub. I had the worst sarnie ever that included a small black hair, nice. However, i did get some geezer to clean my trainers with a toothbrush for about 60p, which is actually alot of money for such a small job. After the dirt munch we got another couple of Cyclo blokes to take us around the town for 100k an hr which is about 3 quid and again is waaaay overpriced but whatever its three quid! We visited the war museum which was pretty good and quite interesting and then went to some Palace place which was utter bollocks and then to Ho Chi Minh Museum which was also complete shit. The problem with these Cyclo cunts is that they are all very happy, nice and polite to start with but when it comes to paying the motherfkers they try to hustle you. Me and Dale ended up with a pretty ugly confrontation which ended up with us just telling the bastards to GTFO when they demanded more money.

In the evening i cant quite remember what we got upto tbh. I think we had a wander and went shopping because Dale had been wearing the same pair of fkin shorts for at least a week (the donk only had one pair) and it was very hot in Vietnam. Here's a quick vid of the fish paying one million for a fake Lacoste shirt, lolz.

Our 2nd full day in Ho Chi Minh was definitely the best of our Vietnam trip imo. We took a 2.5hr boat trip up the Saigon river and through the jungle to the Cu Chi tunnels, an underground network used during the Vietnam war. I found it very interesting and our guide showed us many of the traps that were used to kill the yanks during the war. We were also shown and given a chance to crawl through one of the tunnels and i had the opportunity to fire 10 live bullets with an AK fortay zieben. In the evening me and Roxx went bowling at the Diamond Plaza. Roxx was the worst bowling fish i've ever seen and it was a clean sweep for the Amatay, weee easy game!





Day three and we decided to visit Saigon Zoo. However, the pair of us lazy bums didn't wake up till really late this day and after munching a delish burger in the Hard Rock Cafe we arrived at the zoo to find it had a fooking shut, sighhh FAIL. Instead i think we just pissed about climbing over these tanks in some random nearby museum type place and then played pool at the Diamond Plaza. It was a pretty uneventful day.


Last day in Ho Chi Minh and we decided to go for another delish fat bastard Hard Rock Cafe burger meal and then visit the Saigon Zoo this time before it shut. However, the pair of us plums got a weeee bit lost and I ended up wondering around Ho Chi Minh looking for the fooking Hard Rock on my jack jones after Roxxu had to head back to the hotel after forgetting his memory card. I managed to bink a free ride on the back of some blokes scootay who was working outside a hotel. He just seemed to drop all his duties and fetch his bike then took me about 2 mins down the road to my destination. I asked him if he wanted any wonga and was prepared to probably match his whole salary for that day for his kindness but he wasn't interested. Thats another thing that struck me about Vietnam, how pleasant 90% ish the locals were its just the dirty pimps (more on these at the end of the post) and those Cyclo cunts that make up the other 10%. Once that donko Dale finally joined me in the Hard Rock having got lost himself we quickly nommed down our munch and went to the zoo. It cost us 27p to enter (lolz) and had all the usual animals like Elephants, Tigers, Hippo's etc. The best thing about the zoo was the Croc House which housed about 35 of the prehistoric beasts and was pretty cool.


On our last night we ate at the same place as the first day with the ghost beggar and then had a wander around the town. In the evening there are a ton of pimps hanging about on the street corners. I think its illgeal for girls to whore themselves out in Vietman but if a pimp does it then its fine, weird. These motherlickers were every fooking where hounding us. You want girl? You want two girl? You want young girl? etc etc. If you flat out refused then they would ask you if you wanted Marijuana and all sorts of other stuff. Basically, if you wanted anything then they could probably sort it for ya, some of them were quite funny actually. It wasn't just blokes pimping the girls out btw but also bitches pimping other bitches, mistresses i guess.

There's more stuff i could write about Vietnam tbh but i'll leave you fish with a bunch more snaps. I really enjoyed my stay in Ho Chi Minh, it was a fun and interesting experience. Next stop Hong Kong!



Check out Daleroxxu's Tour Of Cards Blog, plenty more comedy tales, pics and vids of Ho Chi Minh there.

Bangkok Trip Report

Me and Dale flew to Bangkok on Friday afternoon and although Roxxu wanted to stay in some balla £60 a night 5* hotel which btw is alot of dosh in Thailand i convinced that donko to 'slum' it in this 'ghetto' 4* hotel called The Windsor in Sukhumvit for just £17pn (lol, reedit). After checking in, dumping our gear off and scrubbing up we ventured out into Thailand's capital city to get our first taste of Bangkok and it was a pretty eye opening experience for me tbh...

We walked up and down this main street for what seemed like a couple of hrs without a plan and the first thing that struck me was some of the poverty on the streets and the beggars/people selling complete shit like wooden carvings and glowsticks for example. Some of the things i saw i found quite shocking tbh, people with no arms, missing legs, women carrying children, children on their own etc etc just begging/pleading for minimal amounts of money. There were also a ton of these little stalls with Thai people cooking random crap some of which looked like roasted coakroach's and other random insects, no jokes. It was fkin hot and humid as well, plus it was really dirty and you could almost taste the pollution in the air.

We ended up eating some delish three course meal in some classy restaurant for just a tenner which almost seems wrong given what i had just witnessed. After that we accidentally (honest) stumbled into a place called Nana Plaza which kinda resembled Patong in Phuket but just not quite as degen. Me a Dale grabbed a beer and played some pool in a nearby Irish bar with no whores and then just sat out the front to witness some of the unreal stuff going on. Ladyboys galore, beggars galore you name it. I deffo saw alot more Ladyboys in Bangkok than Phuket, they were fkin everywhere in this Nana Red Light District place. I actually found myself giving alot of the beggars money that night for some reason and it kinda made me realise how lucky i am. I remember going to bed that night and reflecting on what i had just seen thinking fuck me, was that shit real? What a place Bangkok is, pure sickness, i don't think i'm going to enjoy the next few days. However, we got up the early the next day to experience more of Bangkok and my opinion began to change alittle....

Alot of the whores and ladyboys were gone as were most of the stinking foodcart things and shitty markets trying to flog allsorts of crappy fake gear. What sort of mug buys stuff from these people anyways? :) There were still quite a few beggars hanging about but Bangkok started to feel abit more like a normal city. However, all of the above was pretty much replaced either by the seemingly endless amount of Thai birds asking you if you want a fooking massage or these other plums trying to shift you a fkin suit! Fk me its about 100 degree's outside, the last bloody thing i want is a fkin suit, GTFO u cunts! After spending a good few hrs walking up and down this same stretch of road trying to organise a fkin city tour it looked like the day was gonna turn into utter bollocks. Despite being slightly both tilted by what had happened that morning what with tour centres being closed or charging LOL prices we decided to sort ourselves out with something to do and it turned into a pretty good day...

We ended up going to a place called the Pantip Plaza and then to some random Thai Premier football match. We took every form of transport available in Bangkok including the Sky Train and taxis which were pretty safe and comfortable as well as these other taxi type things called Tuk Tuk's plus we rode on the back of these motorcyles which weaved in and out of the busy traffic. I think me and Dale probably had a death wish that day tbh but it turned out to be ok and was a good laugh/experience.


First up we went to the Pantip Plaza because we'd heard this was the place to go for all the techy stuff like lappy's and cameras etc which is what we both needed because Dales lappy was busto and i had gg'd my camera that morning (sigh). We got the Sky Train to a place called Siam and then hoped onto the back on these people carrier motorcycles. It was quite a good buzz dodging in and out of all of the busy traffic on the back of these things actually but i didn't exactly feel too safe. Once we got to this Pantip place Dale was in heaven and pretty much jizzed in his pants because that fish loves all that stuff and tbh i was pretty impressed myself. It was full of tons of these little shops selling all sorts of gadgets, plasma's, laptops etc as well as flogging a shit load of rip off gear like pirate software for example. Its illegal in Thailand but there was sooo much of it here that the old bill must turn a blind eye. I managed to purchase some software to sort out my lagging, porn infested comp and also purchased some hooky Photoshop and Microsoft Office for redic cheap prices plus i also brought a new camera. Dale managed to get his comp fixed by this random old Thai dude right at the very top of the plaza in this little workstation crammed full of microchips and component parts etc. The blokes office reminded me of the Keymaker in the film The Matrix when you see him in his little room full of keys if you can picture the image?

Once we had finished in the Plaza we took one of these taxi type things called Tuk Tuks to the National Stadium. I'm not sure what is more dangerous the Tuk Tuks or the Motor Cycle people carrier's but again it was a good buzz being driven through the redic traffic in Bangkok. Once we got to the National Stadium we noticed that something seemed to be occurring in a smaller stadium next door so we checked it. It just so happened that the Thai Premier footy season was starting that day and a game between local side BEC Tero and Buriram PEA was due to KO in about 2 hrs. So me and The Roxxu decided to buy a ticket for £1.60 and purchase a replica shirt for just £7 and become Buriram fans for the next couple of hours. Once we had our shirts on we were getting stared and pointed at by pretty much every Thai fish being the only white idiots to 'support' the Burirham PEA. The standard of the match wasn't too shabby and despite there being only a small crowd in comparison to an English game the atmosphere was decent and our boys went on to deservedly win 2-1. After the game we put our life's at risk again by gambling on another Tuk Tuk to take us to Nana to the same Irish pub from the previous night to watch the Manchester derby. What a fkin goal that was from Rooney!

After the whistle blew we decided to take the safety of a normal taxi back to our hotel to scrub up and go out again for munch. Just as we set off i remember stopping in at a nearby bar to see how my beloved hammers were doing versus WestBrom. Some random geezer told me that all he knew was that we were 3-0 down at HT and i was like uitgu5erytkblujk, fkin GG us! Slightly on tilt by the scoreline i sat in some nice little French gaff for munch and i managed to get a glimpse of the WestHam highlights on a t.v. from across the road. I watched the first three goals get banged in then pleaded with the gods for some divine intervention. 3-1...3-2...3-3!!!! weeeee. Were still going down though i reckon what we some of our upcoming fixtures in April but we still having a fighting chance with that comeback. Come on you Irons!!!

On the final day me and Dale went to an old part of Bangkok which wasn't too impressive so we took a long boat trip up the Chao Phraya River and through the canals which was a good laugh. Dale got soaked on the boat by another passing long boat, theres a video of it on his blog. It cracks me up every time especially at the end. The words, 'fuck my life Amatay, how bad do i run' has me pmsl, classic Roxxu! Here's the clip :) It was pretty crazy passing by all these shacks along the canal bank that were basically peoples homes. The water was dirty and the people were poor. That was one of the main things that struck me most about Bangkok actually, how there is loads of high class hotels/eateries etc either next to or interspersed with such poverty and complete shit holes, such a stark contrast. On the boat trip we also stopped off at this cool Buddha temple for a 20 minute mince and we both got some good snaps.

On our last night me and The Roxxu went to another degen area similar to Nana, its called Cowboy Soy. Again, its full of whores and dirty western men white and as soon as me and Dale went for a beer in one bar some Thai whore was onto us. She was actually the best looking Thai bird i had seen and her English was sooo good that she had prolly chatted to about a million Western men in her life and half of them had prolly thrown one up her. She even had a slight english twang to her accent at times that sounded kinda northern, brummie i think it was, fkin dirtay brummie bastards! Anyways we fked her off and ended up hitting some balls at some pool bar. We had our own VIP room and some Thai bird waiting on us hand and foot, serving us drinks, racking each game and even watching the game. When we needed the rest for example she was there right on cue to sort us out, she was basically our slave and all we had to pay was 240 Baht for 1 hr which is about 5 quid, loool. Even though i've destroyed Dale all trip on the pool tables he somehow luckboxed his way to a 5-4 victory before with gave our slave girl a good tip and then GTFO'd. Bangkok had been another fun experience, next stop Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam..

Yo!

Gonna break this latest edition of Amatay ramblings into sub sections...

Bolton

Last weekend i played the APAT £50 team event for RTR in Bolton. By the time we eventually got there after a cock up with the muthalickers at the hotel and a 3.5hr drive the tourn pretty much started and i was lucky not to go broke in the first five hands. Playing a 10k stack i make it 150 UTG+1 @25/50 and some plum makes it 300 on the button. I didn't actually know what to do here for a minute because 4 betting this early given the initial ep raise pretty much turns my hand face up but i went along and made it 1500 anyways and plum boy cold calls. Flop K103 with 2 clubs. I decided to go for pot control straight away vrs this idiot because if i lead he might raise all the draws he could have flopped as well as a AK KQ type hand plus im worried he already has me crushed. So i check and faggot boy throws out a mincy bet, i obv call. Turns an off suit 5 and i c/c another gay small bet and another 5 rolls off. Pretty confident my bullets are good here but i still elect to c/c a bet but matey boy checks behind. I 'proudly' table my AA and donko tabled 1010 for a flopped set and a full house. WTF???? wp matey. LOL live poker, here we go again. So i've still somehow got 6.5k and chip up with some gd bluffs etc. I made the 1st break but then got jizzed on and busto in nowhere, grrrr.

I spent much of the rest of the day chatting to lots of other Amatay fanboys and generally having a good crack. Pokerwise i suffered a humiliating 3-0 defeat to NoCash and played a few hrs of cash. First up i sat in a 25/25p (LOL) cash game and basically just blasted 76ss aipf on my 3rd hand and got 3 callers, made 2 pr quadroopled up and got up and sat in a £2/2 PLO game with a hundo. It was a pretty stupid game, highlights included winning a £350 pot but also losing a £350 pot, fun times. We left the casino at about 2am and a few of the lads went to a titty bar but me jak and Cogs headed into town (sry DoV). We couldn't get into any bars and instead got some proper dirty munch from a place called Allens Chicken and came back to the hotel. Bolton is an absolute shit hole and it had a proper hostile feel to it as well, didnt feel the vibe one bit. Most of birds looked like they wanted a fligt tbh. It was ok weekend and good to meet up with a few of the lads etc, just a shame sooo many peeps seemed to drop out. RTR meet ups just aren't as good unless you do 2 nights imo. Previous trips to Nottingham, Newcastle and Dublin were really good because of a good balance of poker, banter, beers and a night on the town. This trip was mainly spent in a casino so it rates about a 6/10.

Online Pokes

Not played that much but enough to drop about $2k in the last couple of weeks. Ran pretty shit and played shit because of this. Basically just a bag of bollocks, dunno what else to say, very insightful i know :)

What a cunt i am

Yes, i am a cunt but i've been more of a cunt than usual. Apologises to the RTR lads for not getting my HU games completed. Can you just play all the other games and if mine are of any importance i'll sort it out, sry :( I'm also a cunt because I've really been thinking hard recently about what a poker wimp i am and how i've showed such a lack of ambition in my poker life. I've mentioned it a few times in this gay blog but recently its really bugged me. Its not really 100% due to a lack of ambition its just a lack of bollocks and not playing bigger games and at least taking shots etc. Watching/reading about some lads like Jake Cody, Toby Lewis, Sam Trickett, James Keys etc etc has made me wonder what i could have achieved and who knows could still achieve if i had bigger balls, belief and a greater willingness to play higher and grow/build as a player. I mean whats the worst that can happen? I jizz off £10k-20k pretty quick? mmm so what, i could grind it back up. Even with fish like my mate Adam and Greekstein, even thou i dont agree with the way they have gone about things in the past and between them they have busted more rolls than i've had wanks at least they have had a go at making some 'proper' money.

I also watched back my 'epic' ch4 appearance on Late Night Poker in 2003 because Jak had asked to see it so i treated him to some of my smooth moves. Fuck me 2003 i thought, what a cunt. Although i'm obv a much better player the stakes i play haven't really changed and a shit load of fish like those named above started playing after me but showed more heart, ambition, bollocks etc and obv had the skills to progress. I might not have the skills but the point is I've rarely tested myself. 2003!!! FML. I still amble along playing $20-100f's and 10-30r's and i dont play enough of the these either. FK my bastard life lol, i should be multai.

Staking

Got a small stable atm, Doomswitch on RTR is grinding small buyin 45's on Stars and turned a nice 1k profit early doors which we chopped up but recently he's hit abit of a downswong and is currently in $300 MU. I back another fish on UB for all mtts <$25 and he has about $600 MU. Today i took on a 3rd horsay and although the donko can be unreliable at times he's easily the best of the bunch. He's gonna play mtts on PP and UB <$44 and $11 and $26 45 mans on FTP. Not sure what am getting myself into staking 3 fish tbh and i'll prolly be busto in a few months but fk it, fingers crossed.

The future

Pokerwise i need to grow a pair and put in more effort or just give it up. Fenix is a good example to me i think. He's good and he grinds hard. Plus he has the balls/belief to play higher once his hard work pays off at low/mid stakes. I need to start doing what he does.
Lifewise i dunno??? Went out with Lizzy the other night and its all good etc but i don't know if im interested in anything serious. I like her and shes a good girl etc but im abit meh. The other night was funny because i'd just had my vaccinations for my trip and the 48 hr side effect are they proper knock you out and make you feel really weak and drowsey. She sapped me of every last bit of energy that girl, i had to stop fucking her mid rumps, i was spent. She likes sex sooo fkin fast, too fast. I can't even feel my knob at times when shes bopping up and down my tool 100mph, its redic. Right i gotta go, I got a plane to catch to Phuket in a few hrs, haha. I do not know what to expect but hopefully it will all be good, laters :)