Benny Bigggs: Asian Invasion ‘06

Maybe someday I’ll get my own blog, but until then you’ll have to deal with me invading Benny’s.  Just wanted to let everyone know, a second set of Japan photos have been added and a new set of Korea photos.  Just click over on the right to check them out.  Hope everyone is enjoying the invasion!!! Thanks to Regina for providing the pics.

-Johnny D.

Johnny gets what Johnny wants…

The invasion continues to exceed expectations, we’ve gotten first class treatment since we’ve landed in China. Someone picked us up from the airport and although they had a sign with Regina’s name on it, I’m pretty sure it had something to do with traveling with a member of the bigwheel bikergang. Our hostel obviously know they have a celebrity in house because they set us up with tickets to any event we want and provide a free ride to and from wherever we are going (shout out to my girl Apple). They also give us a free breakfast in the morning and help us in anyway you can imagine all for a grand total of 10 bucks a night. Money goes very far in Beijing and since my TDY was cancelled I’m thinking about moving here. The only drawback to our hostel (and all of Beijing for that matter) is that the bathrooms suck. You aren’t allowed to throw toilet paper in the toilet (what was I thinking) because it will clog up the pipes. In fact virtually no bathroom in Beijing comes with toilet paper so Brownie would be screwed if he came here. You also have to use water from a water bottle to brush your teeth and the shower is not separated from the rest of the bathroom so you shower between the sink and the toilet.

Right now Beijing is under MAJOR construction for the 2008 Olympics so it seems like every road and monument is under construction or renovation. Our hostel is located up a very shady alley that is all dirt road. Every morning there are like 50 people working on digging it up and I suppose eventually they will actually put a road there.

The lovely Regina and I have done a lot here so far, we’ve visited the temple of heaven, the lama temple, Confusus’ temple, the forbidden city and tiananmen square. The forbidden city was by far the coolest thing we’ve seen so far and I’ll post pictures soon. When we got to the hostel there were notices that con artists lurk out at places like tiananmen square and try to strike up conversations in english so you’ll befriend them so they can later suggest you go out for drinks and stiff you with the tab. This is pretty much true. Everywhere we went random people came up to us trying to talk to us about how they went to school in China or some other over-friendly story. I would hand them my bikergang card and walkaway, so if you guys are reading this now..nice try. I also handed out my card to alot of  those annoying people who try to hand you flyers when you’re walking around…they didn’t know what to do.

As you may have figured out by now we stick out quite a bit over here. There are tons of people who come up to us and ask if they can take pictures with us. No word on whether that’s because I’m a member of the bikergang or because Regina and I maybe the first white people they’ve ever seen…you be the judge.

Well that’s all for now…we got the Great Wall coming up in the next couple days, if I had my bigwheel I’d could find out exactly how many Great Wall steps a bigwheel could go down before it got detroyed.

BB

Well we’ve landed safely in China and it looks like I can access this blog even from China. There’s a lot to say about China but I want to fill yous in on our days in S Korea. There’s no better place for the invasion to go then a US military base and we were greeted like heros there by Liza and one Daniel Elden White (better known as Dewey). They took us around the base, they gave us a place to shower, they did our laundry and most importantly they introduced us to Soju a potent Korean drink.

We spent our first day in Korea hanging out at the Oson base and the town around the base. I have never seen so many bars in my entire life. We got into town the day before 15 straight days of hardcore training began so pretty much the entire base was on a mission to get shit faced that day and Benny Bigggs was going to help the troops any way he could.

The town surrounding the base was absolutely insane. Charles will be sad to know there was only one sighting of an asian prostitute (a pleasant creature named “the road warrior” who would grab you when you walked by and say, “wanna go??”) because the military cracks down on prostitution there. However there are the Juicy girls. Juicy girls are Phillapeano girls that sign 1 year contracts to “mama pimps” to work in their clubs. They work 7 days a week have strict curfews and only get one night a week off (and I thought Lockheed was bad). You can only buy conversation from a Juicy girl and it costs you 10 bucks which goes to a drink for the girl and she only stays as long as it takes for her to finish the drink. Some guys can buy a girl for the whole night but the girl is then free to go home or hang out with the guy if she wants (sucks for that loser).

Dewey thought it’d be a great way to support the invasion by buying me 1 drink worth of a Juicy girl. She tried to show me how to line dance to hip hop music and told me all about how one day she wanted to be an x-ray technition. Benny Bigggs was of course a perfect gentleman to her which maybe why she didn’t leave even a half hour after I told her I wasn’t going to by her another drink. She finally left when Dewey got her attention and told her it was time to go. Next came lots of beer, ammo shots, soju and about 8 kettle shots (whatever those are) and this boy from south phillywas learning how to 2 step. I don’t remember if I was any good but I don’t remember falling. All in all Benny Bigggs tried to show the men in uniform a good time.

For those still interested is the cultural piece of the invasion I should let you know that the Korean people in general are pretty rude and Seoul is not the friendliest place we’ve been. The older Koreans will push you out of the way if you are in front of the in the street or even if you are in the middle of paying in line. The younger Koreans are much friendlier and a little more westernized but they still respect the older Koreans and put up with their ways. As far as Seoul goes, it had it’s moments but I didn’t see a lot to that really separated it from any other big city I’ve seen with the exception of one bar district that beat anything I’ve seen in the US. My pictures should be posted soon.

Well thats all for now…we are back in a hostel that has easy internet access so hopefully I’ll be on soon to talk about China. I think China has officially sent Regina and I into culture shock so don’t forget to leave some love…

B

Even the best invasions don’t always go smoothly and regina and I finally had that day where everything goes wrong. We were suppose to climb fuji on thursday night and the information online said the 3 busses left at 7:50, 8:50 and 9:50. So we went supply shopping for some gear so we wouldn’t die on the mountain and went to the station for the 7:50 bus. Since no one speaks english it took us till about 8:30 till we found the right station and everything where they promptly let us know that the info online was wrong because the last bus to fuji left at 8:10. I think Regina was secretly glad we missed it because it later started downpouring.

Afterwards we tried to find solace in the only thing that could make the day any better…beer. We went back to our new hostel (which kicked ass) and drank with the people staying there. About 2am one of the English guys there tells us about a karaoke bar he knows about and how he knows the bartender there and he’ll hook us up with free karaoke if we buy drinks. So we went there and we had some strong as sake (is that how you spell it ryna??) and did some karaoke that would have made even Chippy Chippy Yum Yum proud. If you’ve never heard her I would recommend catching Regina in concert just make sure you bring ear plugs So after a few pavarotti-esque songs regina sat down at the bar and all of the sudden couldn’t stop hiccuping. She tried to get the bartenders attention but he was playing on the internet so she asked me to get the pourer from behind the bar so she could have water. So as I’m grabbing it the English guy all of the sudden starts going nuts and saying we were trying to steal alcohol and this is how we repay him back and blah blah blah. Maybe this guy never heard of the bikergang?? The bartender obvious didn’t care and we smoothed things over with him but the English prick couldn’t get it straight that we weren’t stealing so we bounced.

After we found our way back to the hostel in the pouring rain we noticed the hostel door was locked. The guy at the front desk gave me the pin number to get back in when we checked in but I left it in the room. Luckily there was an overhead and a couch under it so we could passed out on that. You might be surprised to learn this was not the first time Benny Bigggs “slept” outside.

We finished up Japan by shopping in Shibuya and checking out the Love Hotels where you can buy used underwear in the vending machine (I’ll bring some back for Charles).

Well thats all for now I’ll be back on when I can to report about our time in Korea and Benny Bigggs first experience with the juicy girls…

B

 

While we were drinking with this Aussie chap at the hostel last night, he told us about a game he played with his friends where they would give him 2 missions in every country he visited, an easy one and a hard one. So if you post comments about what missions you’d like to see us do while we are traveling around, Johnny will read them all and post the 2 he would like us to accomplish. We leave for Korea tomorrow so depending on the feedback we may not start the missions until we get into China on the 25th

B

Hey… It’s Johnny, the fearless leader of the Big Wheel Biker Gang. Sorry if I got you all excited thinking you were getting a new post from Benny. I just wanted to say thanks to Benny Bigggs for doing such a great job invading Asia, even if his spelling isn’t that great , and to let you know…. It’s now even easier for friends, family and fans of Benny Bigggs to keep track of his adventures. Instead of typing out the whole web address, you can now just type in www.bigggs.com, not that you already haven’t bookmarked the blog! Hope this helps out everyone and don’t forget to check out the rest of the gang in the “BWBG and Friends” links section on the left side of the page.
We now return you to your invasion already in progress…

(Beware a toilet story is ahead and may not be suitable for small children…)

Technology and Tokyo have always seemed to go hand and hand as Reginia and I discovered today. We visited the Electronic District today which is a market that hosts a least 100 different vendors with everything from computer parts, dubbed 80’s (I swear there was an Emilio section) to next years cell phones.

But did you know that the Japanese are also on the forefront of toilet technology as well?? The tea ceremony we went to today (probably the coolest thing we’ve done so far) was housed in a very expensive hotel. After using the facilities Reginia told me the toilets in the bathroom had a control panel on it with tons of buttons and 1 of them warmed the seats. Sounding to good to be true I decided to check it out. It turns these controls only work if you actually sit down on the toilet and being the adventurous traveler I am, I obliged. After playing with the console for a bit I decide to press the button labeled “spray” and the next thing I know there was a humming sound and some vibrating thing was going near my bum which prompted me to jump off my seat and into the stall door. The next thing I know I am getting hosed down by an electronic biday. Lesson learned….

It FINALLY stopped raining today and Reginia said if it doesn’t rain tomorrow she’s going to climb fuji so keep your fingers crossed (for whichever way you voted)

And finally…We’ve been posting a lot lately but we are leaving this hostel tomorrow so I don’t know how much internet access we’ll have to post in the next 5 days (2 left in tokyo and 3 in a hotel in Korea). I’ll try to post one more time before we leave, especially if we climb fuji. Well we’re off to the bars….
B

Here are some pics for now…many more to come…. 

Ronald lends a helping hand to the invasion

The moat around the Imperial Palace

Every good invasion needs a Colonel!!

One of the beautiful gardens in Tokyo

Tokyo’s Imperial Palace

Ancient Japanese customs make hostels smell like feet

B&E is breaking and entering for all you civilians out there and it:s a good thing benny bigggs has a long history of it. While I was drunk blogging last nite the lovely reginia decided to lock us out of our dorm room (I suppose bubba can put a poll up to decide who was more drunk last nite). Luckily I took a B&E class at south philly high and was able to use a credit card to break us back in since our only other option was sleep on the feet smelling floor or disgusting common couch.

 As far as the Fuji update, all your comments are helping. I think I:ve almost convinced reginia to climb it with me. Since I hear i:m getting 2-1 odds put me down for 1000 fazuls to climb the mountain. I:d bet cash but this trip is costing me all my cash so i:m gonna have to bet in WIP currency

So I bet you:re all wondering about tokyo…well its not nearly as crowded as we expected and virtually no one speaks english. We order our meals mostly through the language of pointing and luckily the Japanese have inifinite amounts of patience and are the nicest people I:ve ever met. You can also find beer in any vending machine on almost any corner, porn in any corner store and dayum this town loves to gamble. Even the arcades are 95% gambling games so they start off their kids off right.

Basically Tokyo didn:t need much of an invasion it was already a benny biggg:s mecca. And as far as the invasion is going people still bow to us wherever we go and we:ve enlisted the help of a few friends to spread news of the invasion (the pics should be posted today).

 And finally for the people that actually want to hear the nice things we:re are seeing, I:m posting some pictures of the places we:ve been. The gardens around tokyo are amazing and the imperial palace was definitely worth seeing. Reginia and I have also taken part in some Buddist prayer ceremonies. I:ve finally tried sushi and we got a 360 night-time view of Tokyo in the Mori tower that put all other city views i:ve seen to shame ..next up the electronic district, taking part in a tea ceremony and some R&R at the public bath houses

B

 warning drunk post ahead… 

More about our first couple of days in Japan later….I wanted to get some votes on a debate that is raging in the anex hostel right now….to climb mt fugi or not to climb fugi?? We just spent the last 3 hours in a bar listening to 2 people with completely differnet opinions on the matter. In one corner we got a spanish guy saying it was his favorite part of the trip and in the other corner we got a group of irish/english guys that went today that said it was by far thew worst day of their lives because they got pneumonia and it was 12 hours and the wind almost blew them off the cliff and blah blah blah. Apparently we are in the last week of rainy season and the typhones are starting up. They complained it was 11 hours in the freezing rain and they couldn:t see anything because of the clouds.

Maybe it:s all the sokee in me tight now but I still want to climb it so send your comments to convince Regina to go up there with me or send your comments to mee saying i:m a retard and shouldn:t climb the mountain even though they are predicting rain for the next 5 days with 100% certainty.

 ….And just in case you:re wondering the Japanese are accepting the invasion better than expected, they bow to benny bigggs everywhere we go woo woo

I just wanted to check in for a second and let everyone know we landed safely in Tokyo. The flight was loooong (13 hours) and the movie choices sucked. The only movie I watched was Take the Lead that starred antonio banderas teaching misfit 10 kids from the ghetto how to ballroom dance while they were in detention…the script wrote itself.

 Anyway we haven:t seen much of Tokyo yet but the hostel and an area called Asakusa which is where our hostel resides in. We have to take our shoes off before we enter the hostel so the front smells like feet which is perfect cause the bathroom smells like ass. We have bunkbeds (benny bigggs is always on top) and our room is about the size of a closet. All in all I missed hostel living

 Today the invasion offically begins our sites set on Tokyo. It:s suppose to rain everyday we are here but even the elements won:t stop the invasion although it will make climbing mt fugi interesting. I:ll report all on tokyo soon and leave some love

BB

It’s 12:30am before the invasion and Benny Bigggs has just started packing. I’ve got to remember to pack the 1000 big wheel biker gang cards Johnny printed up for me and of course my lucky sponge bob boxers

Starting July 15th…