Prubangboy

Occasionally I will get patted on the gut by a cutie and asked, "where is bay-bee"?

I pretend I don't understand and ask back, "you want to make a baby with me? Let's do it right now".

Always gets a playful little punch in the arm.

On the other hand, I just had a triple shot of Havana Club Blue Label (the rum grail) at a nowhere little bar in our São Paulo Air BNB neighborhood.

$6. Came with some peanuts and a few gerkins.

I also got a great Pink Floyd Dark Side of the Moon Sweat shirt for $20. for over-a/c'd flight home. So a great day out.

Overpriced -and great drink bargains- threadjacks are welcome in this thread.

On 8/21/2024 at 11:34 AM, maesariang said:

2 years jail for any official country flag burning imo.

I have burned a flag. On the 4th of July, no less.

-To celebrate my constitutional right of free speech to do so.

I'd be happy to do it again in front of your retard, impotent face.

Meanwhile, Don Jr. wants RFK to "blow up" a federal agency if appointed (ha!).

This feeds neatly into the 2025 speech Kamala is going to beat them over the head with. They want chaos and no government services.

Will Cokehead say which agency? No. He will run away faster than RainMan II does.

We no longer have to attack them. We can just point to any gun they like to have in the room with them and watch them run over, grapple with it and shoot themselves in their stupid foot.

Just now, Andrew Dwyer said:

 

As a Brit non resident i claimed my tax back every year but was working for an American company.

 

 

No tax treaty with the. USA.

Also, they somehow have never heard of a rum and coke here. Half the time, they bring a very sugary mojito with way too much un-muddled mint instead.

If you buy a property for more than $175K, you can get residency. That amount get you half the quality of Thailand. 

High tax rates kick in very early here after 6 months. My friend will do six months in Argentina a year to side step that. 'Seems like too much trouble for the spanky women, but he's a man on a mission.

I agree with Kramer above: You'd have to be crazy to spend 30% more to live here for half the quality of life.

Had Feijoada yesterday. You can order a light version, free of the dross for double the money.

I def suggest you do. To compensate, they tossed a pork chop on top. There's a tear drop shaped deep friend thing with a tiny bit of meat in it that's another grease bomb that's everywhere. And very spongey cheese bread little nuggets. These 3 items and the maquetta stew would be what you'd make in a cooking class. Inexplicably charging $120 here.

But again, always a full aperitif bar on offer even in a dump. Such esoterica as Cynar (more bitter Campari) and Bunterberg (Jagermeister from hell) is available to chase down your pig ear.

The Caprihinia cocktail tastes like a Marguerita from Tijuana skid row. like grain alcohol with a lime -and a ton of sugar. Begging for no sugar is successful 50% of the time. Were these people ever lucky enough to sip a San Tip, they would think it was Johnny Walker.

Salvador promised a bit of the old voodoo culture but it was less accessible than even in New Orleans. There's a cultural show twice a week. 4 hours long.

The tour seller at the hotel was honest: "it's only 2 hours long, the rest of the time is hotel pickup and drop-off'. So in a way, def a very Brazilian cultural experience.

This place is not built for tourism at all. Without my Portuguese-speaking friend, I'd have been fairly lost. Ubers will often tell you that you need to walk somewhere else to get picked up. They tell you this in Portuguese. 

The old town resembles the French Quarter. Not so much historically  preserved as simply left alone. A few un-touristy shops selling African beads and white dresses for their ceremonies. Very beautiful and mostly empty. No English spoken. Some Havana-like bars, maybe half a dozen restaurants with an English menu.

We went to TA #1 choice, Oydoyo, and ordered a moquetta, a vast bubbling stew of various banana's and your choice of protein. Not a lot of taste. They fear the chili spice here. It's like yellow curry for hospice patients.

Later, at a 5* restaurant near the water, it was the same indifferent service and tepid red snapper with a smear of hospice yellow sauce atop a pile of pureed plantains, Def NYC prices. Salads are must orders in Brazil due meticulous chopping of everything into tiny bits and dozens of ingredients.

An Anthony Bourdain landmark had what looked like giant falafels stuffed with small unshelled shrimp (why?) and mashed yucca.

A  green coconut seller had left his post unattended for the length of our meal (30 minute wait for street food) so they were not available.

The biggest grease bomb of my life, surpassing even low rent kabobs in England after pub-closing.  Napkins? Seriously? 

We went to the mall to buy pants, like a Thai mall on valium. They promised alterations that day, 2 days later, but after dozens of heartfelt texts explaining what was going on with the pants, we went back to the mall to investigate. Profuse apologies, and a promise of hotel delivery by midnight.

And then they pointed behind the cashier to a small bar set up. Double shots of 18 year old Chivas Regal and a small cheese plate were put out. We laughed about life and pants. For 2 hours. They kept pouring drinks and begging us not to leave.

So when people ask why I like Brazil when there's really not that much to see or do there, the food is blah, and everything is a soft hassle, I say "that".

8 hours ago, JoergADA said:

How did you get to Brazil ?

 

Contemplating the route via Addis Abeba, just for the adventure. The price is also good.

 

 

Air Emerits. 90 minute stop in Dubai. They emailed a business class upgrade for $600 per trip leg. I took it. Very, very plush.

Addis is not currently safe to walk around in. I wanted to go for the zany Afro-Mod architecture. The famous community of old repatriated Rasta's is all but extinct. That's the other reason I passed.

Turkish Air was the other option I considered because buying RT's to Istanbul and then on to São Paulo was only $200 diff.

Jet lag was brutal, but Chiang Mai has a place where you can but Xanax easily.

Tinder game for my friend was through the roof in Salvador, but the usual Brazilian problem: the flake factor was also through the roof. He set up 12 sure-thing dates. All solid 9's. All blew him off.

We were only there for 3 days, but he's a seasoned Brazilian-phile, so he knew to overbook. 

The sugar thing here is the way to go. Unlike elsewhere, they're all early 30's. Call it triple the going Thai rate. And you have to speak Portuguese. 

7 minutes ago, NowNow said:

 

Congratulations, you fulfilled my expectation.

 

 

Seriously?

2 hours ago, Roo Island said:

There's more to these countries than boom boom. Bizarre

Yes (in spirit), but uh, no. Brazil is an under the radar women-meeting paradise.

I'm here visiting my friend who left New York to live here and study very hard Portuguese specifically for the women. It sure aint the food.

Suppose you're a male sapiosexual who wants to have sex with young intellectuals who read Jean Paul Sartre. Jean Paul is buyable at most newsstands. Bukowski is Beatles-level big here too. Everyone has their nose in a book.

Eat in the most basic restaurant, Coltrane is on the soundtrack. Go to an art museum, you need a reservation. Super-fashionable in a very local-centric way too. They're poor at near Thai-levels, but semi-genius.

Suppose your tastes run a little kinky. That's more attainable here among good looking women than anywhere else.

Is there a correlation between Sartre-loving and bondage-loving?

My friend says, "I hope so. I think so". 

27 minutes ago, josephbloggs said:

Thanks for sharing. I had a different experience though.  

 

and much less crowded (if I remember correctly - it was 18 years ago now).


 

Your experience may no longer be replicable.

Right now is the lowest of the low season. The helicopter ride was fully booked out. Over-tourism will need another Covid blowup to get cured.

I have an upper-medium favorable opinion of Brazil and I will def come back next year.

I am not much of a Big Bang  tourist sight kind of tourist, so that colors my view. I imagine if I was writing about the current state of The Grand Canyon (my all time fave Big Bang sight), I'd have the same mobbed-out aversion.

Problem: Massive tourism like everywhere now. It's $200 for the day out with the lady driver, a Bolisaro/Trump worshipper -just work in that angle -as always.

Up at the crack of dawn, it was wall to wall people by 11 AM. You have three trails with 3 overlooks to view. By the time we got to trail # 3 (the money shot one), it was a slow-moving trudge along a 20 minute metal grating walkway, fully packed out, both coming and going.

You get your obligatory selfie shot by the railing and then you are very happy to leave. The to and fro is very wetlands-scenic with a few exotic birds about. The little train that takes you between the trails also starts requiring missing a train or two until you can finally get on.

My 5 minutes there was true grandeur with the roar of the falls and the dizzying mist - but dampened (literally) by the 500 people I shared it with. Many a photo buff is setting up stepladders and and other equipment to further block your view. Many a baby is a-wailing.

I stayed at the pricey hotel on the Brazilian side which has what is supposed to be a very inferior view. It was def less dramatic (you're viewing the falls from a distance), but you're also viewing them with a cocktail in hand, 5 minutes from your room. At 8 AM, you're viewing them completely alone.

The hotel was half off 4 Season rates, but only about a third as good, so do your own personal math on that. Food was a letdown, not particularly Brazilian, more like a very good Marriot anywhere in the world. A few monkeys scamper about near the pool. Wouldn't do it again, but it was a satisfying one and done with very warm and personal service.

I skipped the bird parks and the power station tour. 36 hours in town felt a little long.

Without commenting on the moderation here, I want to express my great appreciation of the moderators here.

First stop: Iguazo Falls.

I didn't love it. Anyone who wants to see them to great effect with Morricone's most stunning soundtrack should watch this clip:

Interest-wise, it's a grower, not a show-er. It takes a while for it's qualities to impress you.

I thought it was Mex City with worse food, but it's the Thailand of S.America -the weird left turn place from the greater continental mass of it's neighbors.

Battery is getting low, so I'll come back with more later. But:

Anyone been here or S.America in general?

5 minutes ago, Neurath said:

Never bread, man, never bread.

Bignok and Trump actually fear bread. 

Bread = death.

What point exactly are you trying to win here?

Would you go out of your way to go to a specific fast food burger place?

Me, no. I prob eat about half of my dozen or so a year at an airport. Whichever one is closer to my gate.

In Chiang Mai, only McD is 24 hours. So I might get 2 of the dozen delivered at 5 AM.

Trump said yesterday:

"You can't even cross the street to buy bread without getting raped, shot, and killed".

Rainman:

What say you?

.....Actually, the place on Suk across from Nana is/was a Carl Jr. About the same.

Most fast food burgers are close to interchangeable. I rate Burger King slightly for the marginal charcoal taste.

It's the sides where they differentiate. Like he said, BBB has better than average fries.

It's madness to say, "I don't like X" in a thread about X. I don't like sports, but I feel no need to go into that board branch and tell people not to like a thing they clearly do.