Gross Stuff...In Southeast Asia

There are a million obviously gross things that one might come across in Southeast Asia. Milky shit rivers running wide and deep throughout Indonesian urban areas, a motorbike flattened crusty rat getting wedged between my flip flop and flesh in Saigon, fried pork for breakfast, lunch, and dinner in Manila, and a veritable assortment of rotting produce everywhere. Yet some of the grossest things I’ve come across remind me that LA and Southeast Asia? Not so different after all! Case in point, I was walking down Le Thanh Ton St. in Saigon and passed a parked taxi driver fiddling around with something in his car. He then proceeded to exit the vehicle and carefully hang a fresh plastic bag full of urine on a telephone pole. There are plastic bottles full of taxi driver pee all over the city but this is the first plastic bag of pee I’ve seen. This happens in LA all the time I’m sure.




Gross stuff in Southeast Asia also manifests in the form of horrible translations and nascent health practices involving little flesh eating fish. Sometimes though, I can’t help but indulge in very curious gross habits and Singapore might be the cleanest place in the world to do this. I made an appointment with Dr. Fish the other day and let a pool full of miniature fishies eat all the dead skin off my feet and lower legs. At first I didn’t think it was so gross…but then I thought about what was actually occurring – i.e. hundreds of little fish full to the brim with hundreds of different dead skin cells from recent patrons.



Translations into English are also perfect fodder for gross stuff. For instance, I nearly gagged at the possibility of eating a bowl full of the “cream of funny man” at an ice cream parlor in Quy Nhon.



Please keep your children well clear of this “special” swimming pool in Toraja.



But even grosser is this “sandwich” made out of “meat” and “veggies.”




I’ll keep my “eyes” far, far away from your “salami bags,” thank you very much (guest post by Sarah G. Grant)