This Gum I'm Sitting In Is Really Intriguing

last night i went to see the vietnam v. singapore match on the opening day of the tiger cup, a football tournament for the countries of south east asia. (because everyone here calls it football, not soccer, and the rest of the world seems to agree that it is a game played with the foot, not necessarily while wearing socks... err i too have taken to calling it football. so from now on if i talk about the kind of football played by super-intelligent gorillas wearing gigantic helmets, massive body armor, and wedgie-prone spandex pants, who all grapple and grab at each other, with good play rewarded with a firm slap to the ass; i will refer to it as 'american football' or fagball.)

of an estimated 25,000 fans, i'd say that alison, carrie, mike, david, sam, and i constituted nearly 100% of the foreigners in attendance. we got there on time but the match between indonesia and laos was played just before the start of the vietnam match, so there were roughly 24,994 people who had already found a seat by the time we walked into the stadium. and by 'seat' i mean everyone was sitting shoulder to shoulder on a concrete step that surrounded the field and went up about 20 rows.

as we were scoping out the situation from the closest railing we could get to, i felt someone's hands reach into my back pocket. i had my wallet and cellphone in my front pockets along with my hands so i just let the aspiring pick-pocket feel around back there for a little while which tickled, but no one's ever tried picking my pockets before and i wanted to mark it off on my itinerary. soon i got bored though and started backing up into him and elbowing him in the rib cage and saying 'excuse me' in vietnamese, but he still continued to wiggle his tiny vietnamese hands around in my pockets. if he had been young and well-groomed i'd have been worried, but he was old and filthy so i knew for sure he was a hobo, not a homo. someone later suggested that i should have tried picking his pockets which i thought was a good idea and if this happens again, i will definitely do. but before i could do anything, we began following some people making their way to the far side of the concrete bleachers so i followed them, and left ol' busy fingers to pick some other schmuck.

i was satisfied with what we found: the last row located at the corner of the field with a 3 inch ledge to sit on. it was tight though. a couple of girls showed up just a little later than us, and after getting to the top and realizing there weren't any seats, some noble vietnamese man indicated to the lovely ladies that there was still at least one, as he motioned to his crotch.

the seats weren't so bad. we actually had a great view of the only goal vietnam scored in the match: a header in the second half. unfortunately the singapore players broke out the bamboo and began beating up on the comparatively petite vietnamese players later in that half, literally flooring about 4 or 5 of them every couple minutes at one point, prompting the stretcher guys to run clear across the field over and over as if they knew exacty what they had to do to make me laugh. but there was nothing funny about singapore scoring the tying goal and the game ending in a draw, unless you find watching 24,994 vietnamese people walking out of the stadium with one big collective frown on their faces funny.

the game was a great deviation from the normal routine of eating dinner, drinking beer, and playing pool every night, even though we did that anyway after the game. i was chanting along with the crowd, and waving to the coca-cola girls, and dancing to the trance music played during half-time which actually sent the crowd into a semi-catatonic state (the music, not my dancing).

i'm especially happy about the free souvenir i got as well: a genuine wad of gum chewed by an actual football fan stuck to the seat of my pants. to be honest, i wasn't happy at the time i discovered it. i thought about how i'd like to find the person that chewed that gum and instead chew him, and then i would intentionally sit on him and walk around all day with that asshole smeared across my ass. but then i realized that this other pair of ruined pants is actually a gift from god. like everytime i see that gum stain i'll think "hey, remember when i went to that vietnam-singapore game in saigon and that guy tried picking my back..." son of a bitch. i don't think that guy was a pick pocket at all. no, it was he who stuck the gum to my pants!

[DUNN DUN DUUUNNNNN]

or not, i don't know; i can't really be sure.