My first blog ever

So it may come as a surprise to some of you, but I managed to catch a movie last night while on a once in a lifetime trip to SE Asia, I never forget my priorities. Maybe it was the 4 years of film classes and a failed minor which makes it impossible for me not to use the movie to draw parallels to the trip, but here goes...
Coles, Joey, and I saw Pirates 3 last night, Gideon stayed strong and is waiting for his lady friend. W/O spoiling the film, it partially takes place in Singapore, coincidentally where we saw it. Bruckheimer and Disney managed to include every Asian Stereotype I can think of, portraying them as small, Kung-Fu proficient, accented-English speaking, sneaky, oh, and did I say small? minor characters. Sitting in a theater with 250 Asians and us, three white kids from the U.S., this should have been an awkward 2h 55min. To my surprise, however, the crowd cheered, laughed, and seemed to take no offense to the way they were depicted by the American filmmakers.
This has generally been the case for the past week or so, genuinely nice people everywhere we go. Men and women have more often than not approached us when we looked lost and given us directions and advice with nothing expected in return. While we are often "those guys," sticking out and attracting due attention, everyone is tolerant and patient. The always efficient and friendly manner in which we are served food, accomodated at hostels, and helped in our transport endeavors has been a pleasant surprise.
In buying tickets to the movie last night we were able to choose our seats via a monitor before going in, amazing. This system, as Gideon pointed out, puts people first over money. We turned down a showing in which there were only front row seats available for a later show which had better seats, leaving seats to the earlier show unsold. Back home, they would sell seats until they were all gone, regardless if it forced you to sit alone in the front right corner, away from your fellow patrons. Furthermore, soda and popcorn (large) was a manageable 5 or 6 Singapore dollars; equal purchases back in the States would have easily been double or more: again an example of human comfort and convenience over bottom line profit.
Lastly in this overly long first blog of mine is the theater urinals. Uncomfortable was an understatetement as they were aligned facing each other and crammed together so you had to sidle your way in just to stare face to face with someone else a foot in front of you. I couldn't help but think of the millions of apartments we had left behind in Hong Kong. People are stacked there as far as the eye can see, building after building of one room, squallored, dwellings. The inhabitants spend their days serving those more fortunate, less than one percent of the approximately 7 million strong population. Scenes from the Matrix, with endless immobile people being sucked dry for sustenance by a superior entity come to mind, the busses and subways serving as the conduits for their labor, which makes possible all of the spotless restrooms, polished floors, gleaming windows, and our always smiling faces throughout the trip.

My thoughts on HK and Singapore as I sit in our hotel in Vietnam, hopefully more to come.