Why I should be made an ambassador

Before my passport is revoked, before my hold departure order is implemented, and before I am made ambassador to Scarborough Shoal, allow me to share excerpts from my diplomatic missions around the world in preparation for my next book that will be out on bookshelves when the Department of Foreign Affairs grants me diplomatic immunity.

Hold Your Horses In Singapore

There comes a time in every young adult male’s life that he yearns to be treated to a government-sanctioned performance of topless dancing white women in Singapore. Or something like that. 

It was the (late and much lamented) Crazy Horse Saloon. And no, this is not a place to go when you want a pedicure. The salon’s website read, “The most beautiful and artistic nude show, Crazy Horse occupies a unique position in the world of show business. The performance is unquestionably a temple to the lights, music, precision and choreography and beautiful costumes that adorn the perfectly proportioned dancers. The unique concept owes its existence to the imagination of a visionary genius, the late Parisian Alain Bernadin.” Of course, most of us only read up to the word “nude.” Ah, Singapore. You can’t chew gum but you can view naked buns.     

Crazy Horse is a cabaret, a form of entertainment that features comedy, song, dance and theater with a level of bawdiness that is dependent on the people who are watching the show. Much like our noontime game shows.

As the lights dimmed and the theater hostess strapped me to my seat, a widescreen monitor flashed the names of the evening’s performers: among them were Venus Oceane, Fanny Oustiti, Fasty Wizz, Reva Romantika, and the ever discreetly named Lady Pousse Pousse. “Amazing,” I thought, “these Frenchmen really know how to name their topless women.” The grand opening consisted of a line of unclad beauties kicking and screaming while elegantly garbed in top hats, fishnet stockings and birthday suits. After their opening number, everything else in the show turned into a flesh-colored blur. I didn’t realize that seeing so many half-naked women at the same time could be disorienting. However, I clearly recall two performances that meeting: the first were two topless women doing acrobatic poses which resembled nude yoga (in Pinoyspeak, dyoga) while hanging on to large metallic hula-hoops. The second performance was one I was initially reluctant to watch because it was called “Lola.” Thankfully, a wrinkle-free performer with a pink wig and pink pompoms that were strategically covering her pink parts came onstage and made pompoms move in ways I never dared imagine.

Make That Change In Spain

I have always dreamed of visiting Spain, the home of my theoretical ancestors. If you squint really hard enough, you will see how my espasol white skin proudly displays traces of my Spanish heritage. Although I might easily blend into the crowd with my chemically whitened skin, I also wanted to sound more native. Unfortunately, the only Spanish I knew, aside from those lovely-sounding words the cono kids would utter while they swirled my head in the toilet bowl during high school recess, was whatever I learned from Dora the Explorer. Unfortunately, Dora never told me that to speak in a truly Castillian fashion, I would have to modify my speech patterns and replace the sound of the letter “s” into the sound “th.” Apparently, you can master this technique by pretending to talk like Sylvester the Cat. So a couple of weeks before I left, I started my tongue exercises at home with simple words like “Thpain.” “Jereth.” “Thuthmariothep.” “Thufferin’ thuccotash.”

After extensive oral exercises, I experimented with my newly minted accent when we arrived in the motherland. The first thing I was on the lookout for at the Jerez airport, aside from Penelope Cruz, was a money-changing station. I clambered up to the moneychanger and offered up my one dollar bill. “Como ethta mucha buena manang thenora!” I proclaimed with a wink-wink and a half-smile. “Barya?” I asked. 

The female teller, a woman in her mid-50s who wore a pair of horn-rimmed glasses and was a firm believer that there is no such thing as too much lipstick, looked at me and sneered. “Que?” 

“Um, barya manang tindera?” I clarified, rubbing together the dollar between my index and forefinger and my thumb.

She edged closer to her glass window. “Cambio senor?”

Wow, I thought. I discreetly bobbed my head to see if it was that obvious. This was quite embarrassing. It might have been the poor circulation of my legs during the flight could have caused some blood clotting. “Ethte?”

“Cambio!” she exclaimed shrugging her shoulders.

Okay, it was that bad. But what could I do? I was wearing the same pair of underwear for the past 24 hours (and counting). So I reached nimbly into the crook of my pants to perform some quick calisthenics. But when the moneychanger saw me reaching down into my nether regions, she burst into a litany of cuss words that sounded exactly how the cono kids used to talk in high school. After my adjustment, a loud buzz rang out and in a few seconds I had the chance to appreciate the full force of the Spanish gwardia sibil’s anti-terrorist unit. Apparently the word cambio was not used properly when it was transported to the Philippine Islands. The word was probably first used here by DOMs.   

Pata-Ping, Pata-Pong In Bangkok, Thailand

The experience of weaving in and out of the teeming number of stalls in Patpong is best described as an X-rated version of tiangge shopping. You will find the best fake stuff over here: fake designer shirts, fake shoes, fake bags and fake breasts (Although these are more seen than sold. Although selling them is not necessarily out of the question). There were more fakes over here in Patpong than there are in the halls of our congress. 

When you finally grow thirsty after spending 30 minutes haggling down those fake pair of Adidas shoes by five baht (roughly P7), you can grab a cold brew at the nearby establishments that bear such classy names, you could easily mistake them as names of motels, local dance troupes or Korean teleseryes. You have King’s Court, Kangaroo Bar and Wildcats. Or the more subtly named bars like Show Girls, Super Girls and Go Go Girl Hot Stuff Lovers. But the most subtly named gentleman’s club that I came across in Patpong was one that was named after an unflattering female body part and its superhuman prowess, a body part that cannot be mentioned in casual conversation (and, no, its name was not the Super Armpit Tavern or Power Bilbil bar).

My wife and I stood timidly outside one of these subtly named establishments and reluctantly watched a hundred or so women and other dancers of indeterminate gender (whom I later found out were post-operative transsexuals) wearing onion-paper thin bathing suits and knee-high cowboy boots crowd a nine-square-meter stage (or so I am told) for a dance number (of course, that dance number would be Nobody But You. This was a few years ago).

But these floor performances were merely prologue to the main shows tucked away at the second floor. The second floor performers did not rely as heavily on age and aesthetics as they did on athleticism and prowess. That is because these women were performing creative acts with body parts which were not naturally intended to perform creative acts. As those who are below voting age and/or those of weak constitution might possibly be reading this column, all I can share with you about these performances is what I have heard (yes, only heard) from DOMs who braved this cultural performance. I cannot describe those performances without undergoing counseling, but I understand that that their menu of performances include creative acts using sparklers, candles, car horns, cigarettes, pentel pens, shaving blades, throwing darts and ping-pong balls. And, trust me, you wouldn’t want to know what they did with sealed soft-drink bottles. 

Las Vegas

How can a trip to Vegas be complete without a visit to the casinos? So I went to a strip club. Ay sorry, gentleman’s club pala. But I was only visiting the gentlemen’s club for anthropological purposes: I wanted to find out if there were any real gentlemen who were in the club aside from myself.  

So for my study tour, I was chaperoned by some well-seasoned Filipino-Americans (affiliate members of the DOM Philippines International) who advised me of the proper way of tipping in gentleman’s clubs: you take your dollar bill and insert it in areas that pass as undergarments (or other cleaved areas) among the entertainers during their performances.

After spending the better part of the hour having my hundred-dollar bill broken into singles (gusto ko pa sana quarters, but I was told that there was no aesthetically acceptable area in which to insert the coins), we made our way to the first leg of our study tour: the gentlemanly named Cheetah’s Strip Club.  

Since this was a world-class gentleman’s club (as it stated in bright lights right at the club entrance), I was almost certain that there were many Filipino congressmen (you can tell who the Filipino congressmen are in the club if they are wearing a cap and a pair of shades out of habit) who had paid a visit to this institution (they paid with their pork barrels) when they were in Vegas to watch a Pacquiao fight. (In fact, one of my biggest fears was that some blonde woman who was familiar with handling Pinoy congressmen might inadvertently slide onto my lap and whisper into my ear, “Gusto mo na ng lap dance, koya?”) (“Do you want a lap dance, elder brother?”)

For my three female readers who may be unfamiliar as to what goes on at a gentleman’s club, it is similar to watching a fashion show, without the fashion. Well, that’s not entirely true. The women were quite fashionable in their glitter bras, fishnet stockings, and silicone enhancements. But the clothes were of rather questionable quality as they kept falling off. Despite their wardrobe malfunctions, these women were quite the performers. In fact, they could give most beauty contestants a run for their dollar bills in talent competitions with their multiples expertise in calisthenics, yoga and pole gymnastics. 

My companions informed me that the proper etiquette to call the attention of these non-fashion fashion models was to frantically wave your dollar bill at them so that they can allow you to scrutinize their enhancements. Of course, the only thing that most Pinoys can think of at this moment is if scrutinizing those enhancements would be worth P43 (P56 at that time).

Getting Love In Beijing

China. Home to one of the world’s oldest continuous civilizations. Home to a fifth of the world’s population. And home to world’s Lhouie Vhuitton handbags.

One of the few government-mandated purchases you can make in China is of souvenir shirts. However, if you aren’t inclined to wear a printed shirt with images of droopy-eyed pandas or President Obama in a Mao hat (the “Obamao”) or Yao Ming (whose image, by government decree, has now been replaced by that of Jeremy Lin), then the alternative is to purchase one of their trendy Westernized English language “statement” T-shirts.   

One of the souvenir super-mutant English T-shirts that littered the bangketas of Beijing tourist haunts was the “I Heart Beijing” shirts. But since placing the whole word “Beijing” on the shirt might not be hipsterish enough, they shortened Beijing into a couple of letters, much the same way that Manila is shortened to MNL and Bangkok is shortened to BKK. Thus, Beijing was shortened to “I Heart BJ”.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

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For comments, suggestions or an I Heart BJ shirt, please e-mail ledesma.rj@gmail.com or visit www.rjledesma.net. Follow @rjled on Twitter.