Hey Chop,

I'll be in st lucia from dec 17-24. If you happen to be there I'd love to buy you a beer.

Back to not falling off the boat: do you tie on to something in bad weather? Is it a clip/carabiner sorta deal, so you can move about as needed, but are still tied to the rail or some such?

Do you wear special shoes that are really grippy?

They say the best way to murder someone is to go hunting or out on a boat with them. Chop did you need extra crew on your next sailing trip?

Lol you like his dogs that much?

Why do you want to murder Chopstick?

Obviously I don't want to murder chop. Was asking for a friend.

I actually worked with someone who went on a hunting trip where one person less returned alive. Was ruled an accidental death. The same guy got so drunk at the staff Christmas party he stopped breathing and had to be revived. His wife rang work the next day saying "X can't come in today, he died last night." True story. Good times.

better times would be on a boat that you’re not on.

Tell myself I deserved it for falling off the boat in the first place, then get eaten by an oceanic whitetip.


Sounds good, I'll let you know if I end up there during that time. Just flew into Las Palmas yesterday, going to focus on finding a boat now.


Sailors will sometimes use something called a tether, which is a piece of rope/fabric/line with clips on both ends. Clip one end to yourself on a harness, the other end to either the boat, or a jackline set up on the boat. The jacklines run the length of the boat, allowing you to move along it while still being clipped in.

Here's a vid of someone doing a MOB drill using a tether attached to a jackline:




Keens H2s are the only thing I wear outside of special circumstances like weddings, funerals, or malarial areas:



but on a boat I'm usually barefoot.


If you attempted suicide-by-chop, I regret to inform you that I'd make sure you returned to Beety alive and well. If you attempted chopicide, you'd be returned to Beety alive but perhaps not quite as well.

Those shoes look super comfy.

Fwiw I would never kill anyone unless it was self defence.

My wife has a pair of those shoes. She's had something similar for many years. Wears them all over the world, including malaria areas.

Nairobi was pretty sweet. It doesn't have the best reputation, but I had no problems and enjoyed my time there. It was just another decent size city, but with lots of hustle and bustle:




The weird thing about Nairobi and Kenya in general is that everyone speaks perfect English with USA#1 accents. I had spent a good chunk of time learning some Swahili for Tanzania / Kenya / Uganda. Used it every single day in Tanzania, as it is the official language, tho many people also speak varying degrees of English as well. Was ready for the same experience in Kenya but it was like teleporting back to USA#1. Everyone understood Swahili, but no one ever spoke it, except occasionally to each other. I was always greeted/addressed/responded to in perfect English, regardless of whether or not I initiated with Swahili. Having just come from a primarily Swahili-speaking country and a only Portuguese-speaking country before that, it was a nice break, but unexpected.

Found a decent hotel with a sweet desk:



and got a bunch of logistical stuff done that had been piling up. Mailing stuff back, dealing with stateside responsibilities, etc. The wifi was halfway decent for once, so I chilled out there for a week or so getting stuff done and enjoying delicious rooftop breakfasts looking out over the city:



for about $38/night.

Even found time to make it down to the casino where there was a single invite-only PLO game going. They offered to see about getting me an invite but lolpoker so I just got a couple of souvenir chips instead:




and spent my time focusing on the important things, like finding interesting stuff at the grocery stores:




yeah I'm fancy, huh

Also went to a local fast food chain:




as I always try to do. Think I wrote a review in the fast food thread earlier. Kenya is one of the few countries that do not have a McDonalds, although they have a bunch of Pizza Huts.

There are something like 6-8 of these McFrys places around the city:




and it's pretty standard fried chicken stuff.

Also managed to find this place downtown in a semi-sketchy area:




which obv I absolutely had to go to. Lucky for me nobody made change from my five-dollar ass. This place was ofc not a chain and thus was much smaller:




but they had the goods alrighty:




didn't see Pookie anywhere tho.

Nairobi is right next to a large park with all the usual African animals. As I'd seen pretty much all of the major ones already, I instead went to a local elephant sanctuary. That was a mistake, there were a gajillion people there:




tho it was kind of cool to watch them feed the small ones:




Much more fun was the giraffe center a few km away:




which had significantly fewer people:




and where you could literally feed the giraffes right out of your hand with little food pellets they gave you on entry, including on an elevated platform that was about the height of their heads:




it did start to get crowded pretty quickly after I arrived, unfortunately.

I went for a shot of having the food pellet eaten out of my palm:




but of course some asshat decided to put her hand on his snout right as he licked it away:




too bad, but I got a decent video. It's hard to understand just how massive their heads are until they are right next to you like that.

Giraffes are underrated.

While there are a couple of public buses in Nairobi, most of the buses are private. They are called matatus, and there is an entire culture built around them and pimping them out. It's pretty fantastic. They drive around blaring music and they all look different. Mostly music or religious art, and some of them are really well done. I spent a few hours one day just walking around taking photos of them:












and of course, the perfect one for poker bad beats:

Yup. Ever see them fight? Yikes.

oops. Just realized I didn't reduce the size of the photos in those last couple of posts. Hopefully it doesn't slow down the thread load time too much.

While Nairobi was a nice break, it was also kinda boring in that it really could have just been a city in USA#1, so I started looking for parks in Kenya with wild dogs, as they were the one animal I hadn't seen yet. I found a couple, but it was the wrong time of year and the sightings were not good lately, so I decide to leave that for the next trip instead to give me something to look forward to.

Instead, I hopped on a pretty decent bus:




to Kampala, Uganda. That ride is supposed to be about 12-13 hours. Instead, it was around 18. Had me re-evaluating my preference for taking ground transport to see more of the countryside, as there wasn't much to see pulling in at 01:30.

Crossing the border into Uganda was fairly painless, although we did stand in line for about 2 hours. Far better than the buses that arrived minutes after us and were probably there for 4-5 hours. When the border control asked me my reason for entry, I started reciting a list of various Ugandan foods from memory and that went over very well indeed. Slowed down the line for a bit as she called over her co-worker to lol at the mzungu and also suggest a couple of things I hadn't listed. Sorry not sorry. While I had used that approach before, that experience caused it to instantly become my new go-to answer.

The ride over was interesting. I was greeted with a "mzungu!!" yell upon entering the bus by a group of Ugandans who were traveling home from Kenya. As usual, my approach is to engage in a friendly manner, so I chatted them up, which they weren't expecting. By the end of the ride, I had invites to their homes and workplace, which I took advantage of. We had such a long bus ride that we covered a bunch of topics, and I managed to sell them on the concept of guacamole, which they had never had, to the point where when I went over to one of their houses a few days later, we spent a couple hours sitting around making and eating it. Being guacamole, it was of course a huge hit, and we had a blast just hanging out shooting the **** and chowing down.

My shared apartment hotel (waat?) was in the center of downtown, so it was easy to walk to everything, including the post office across the street. Found this sweet postcard:




and also had a cafe downstairs where I had my beloved lemonade for the first time in approximately forever:



other than South Africa, Uganda was the only place I went that year where it was not basically impossible to find lemonade.

The hotel was a first for me - it's a renovated apartment building with a bunch of 2br/3br apartments that have locks on the bedroom doors. You share the apartment common area & toilet, and have your bedroom to yourself. Kind of like a very small hostel, I guess. About $32/night. If no one else is around, you have the entire apartment to yourself.

The first night I had to myself, which was nice since I Ubered in from the bus area at 02:00 and was stupidly tired. A Catalan couple showed up the next night, then a Ugandan businessman replaced them shortly after that. He loved watching TV until 03:00 and had a different prostitute over every single night, so I won't forget that experience any time soon.

The unit I was in was a 3BR:






but the center BR was never occupied. One of the prostitutes drank my apple juice the day before I was going to leave, but I let it slide.

And I do mean she literally drank my apple juice that I had in the fridge, not that she "drank my apple juice"

Kampala is a wonderful city if you like gritty cities. Dirty, dusty, crowded. Lots of pickpocketing and phone snatching. Lots of street food and motorbike taxis. Even Uber uses motobike taxis there. Everyone customizes their bikes to varying degrees with stickers, custom seat covers, and lots and lots of bible passage references.

This dude had no problem with me taking a photo:




which I went for mostly because of this:




but there were lots of other reasons for other bike photos as well:




so I spent an afternoon wandering around asking people if I could take photos of their bikes. Almost everyone spoke at least a couple words of English, but I had also spent a good chunk of that crazy bus ride studying Luganda which is the local language for that region, so they were more receptive when I started off that way. They were also pretty surprised to hear random mzungu speaking Luganda.

Some mostly ignored me after giving the OK:




but others went for a pose, usually one indicating how cool/badass they were:



Exodus 14:14 is: The LORD will fight for you; you need only to be still

Mostly I spent the days hanging out with people and wandering around the city:




experiencing the vibrancy and the energy of places like the markets and the minibus area:




which are always filled with people on the go, getting their hustle on.

Also saw lots of Disney copyright violations, which is a super common thing all thru Africa that I don't think I've mentioned before. This was painted on the side of a school:




and Mickey Mouse was everywhere.

There were a few large stores, mostly supermarkets, but most things were sold in alleys dedicated to specific niches. Here's one of the shoe alleys:




although it was more accurately a flip-flops / fake crocs alley, I suppose. She insisted on being in the photo and then took one of me.

I was also very pleased with the currency options in Uganda:



the exchange rate is about 4000UGS : 1USD, so I took a bunch of fish with me. Didn't take a gorilla and kinda regretting that now. That gorilla note was voted the second most beautiful banknote in the world a few years ago. Personally I preferred the bananas on the 10k note. How are they gonna not make the banana note yellow tho?!

Made sure to eat lots and lots of Ugandan specialties while there. Even found a Ugandan fast food place:




with luwombo (a kind of stew):




and wasted no time getting my goat on:




the goat was melt-in-your-mouth:




and the sides were no slouches, either:




That meal cost about $7 total.

Nice pics, per usual. Blonde chick in up close giraffe shot is especially noteworthy.

Whats the reasoning behind take away being 50 cents more?

The additional cost is for the materials used for packaging up your food. Pretty standard for take away everywhere I went in Africa. It was kind of funny to go to Italy later on and get hit with the coperto that they charge you for eating in instead of taking away.

One other reason might be that plastic products are somewhat frowned upon in lots of places. Plastic bags are outright banned in Rwanda, Uganda, and Kenya. I ended up getting some sweet fabric bags that I kept re-using. They never confiscated my ziploc bags during luggage searches, which I was grateful for. So that may also have something to do with the cost, since usually there is at least some plastic component to the takeaway packaging.

Always tickled by 'with food'. Should be all restaurants. Have rundown of what's what?