Around the World in 80 Girls: The Epic 3 Year Trip of a Backpacking Casanova (57 page)

I
had arranged transportation from Georgetown to Paramaribo by minibus. I was picked up at four in the morning by the giant jolly guy who sold me the ticket. Since I lived right above the “sports” bar there were still drunk and obnoxious people around, and I was glad to leave. The ride to the border was quite comfortable – but once we were there, trouble started.

We
took a ferry across the river that functioned as a border and had to wait quite a while at Surinamese customs. There was only one customs officer, but a few hundred people in line. I was one of the last to be “helped”.

The
custom officer didn’t trust the picture in my passport, where I look a bit younger and had short, businessman hair, unlike the shoulder-length mane I sported now. He asked me for another ID to check, but the only thing I had on me was my Philippine immigration card. Showing him that really set him off. The bastard started asking all kinds of questions like I was some suspicious terrorist or something. He asked me how long I had worked in the Philippines and what I did there. I explained that I hadn’t been working, that an immigration card is needed to stay there longer than two months and that foreigners aren’t even allowed to work in the Philippines unless they have a job a Filipino can’t do, but the border guard didn’t believe me. “How can you prove this is you?” he said, pointing at my picture. I told him to look at the picture carefully and see all my twenty-eight pages of visa stamps. I was speaking Dutch since that’s Suriname’s official language. What more proof did the guy want? The moron even asked me if I was Filipino: me, a tall blond white guy who speaks Dutch. What an idiot!

He
let me go after searching through my bag, when the bus driver started complaining because I was holding up his ride this way. The people in the bus had waited an extra half-hour just because of me.

Since
I was the last to get on the minibus I had the worst seat, and for four hours I sat with my knees nearly touching my chin. There I was thinking I was used to uncomfortable rides. Can’t win, I guess, but that’s what you get when you do some real travelling instead of a sanitized traipse to gather photos you can use Photoshop on later. When we finally arrived, I found a good guest house close to the center of town and had a decent room for twenty-two dollars a night. The bathrooms were shared but spic-and-span, clean and with hot water. This was a great improvement over my room in the whore-bar. It had been a while since I had a hot shower.

The
people in the guesthouse were all Dutch, since Suriname is a quite popular destination for Dutch people of Surinamese heritage and older Dutch people. It was nice to get a bit reacquainted with my native language, which I hadn’t exactly used much in the past two to three years.

The
center of Paramaribo is an official World Heritage site because most houses and churches are made of wood, not unlike Georgetown in Guyana. But I was quite broken from the bus ride, which had lasted ten hours instead of eight, and sightseeing was not on my mind.

I didn’t go out on that Wednesday night but was ready for battle the next. I couldn’t find anyone to go out with on that Thursday night, but by now I didn’t care as much as I used to. Nowadays I even prefer to roll solo, and I’m not desperately looking for a guy to hang out with in a bar. It’s better to man up and go alone than to have a (passive) cock-block standing next to you fucking it all up for you.

Something
really weird happened that night. I’d been told Club Touche was the place to be on a Thursday night. I arrived a bit too early and sat down at the bar, ordered a beer and opened the girl sitting next to me; she was in a group of three. It didn’t go so well and they walked off and suddenly it hit me.

I
can’t game for shit when it’s not in English.

Suriname
is a former Dutch colony and Dutch is the official language there. It should be easy to express myself in my own language but I froze up, and quite frankly I panicked a bit. The last two-and-a-half years I had only spoken and gamed girls in English. I could count on one hand the times I spoke to Dutch girls. Before I left Holland I couldn’t game for shit and had trouble getting a decent girlfriend. I had taught myself lots of things but I learned how to game in English, not in Dutch. This changed everything.

N
ormally I would walk up to a girl and say something like: “Hey, how are you? Are you enjoying yourself?” and continue to talk from there. I didn’t know what to say in Dutch.  I wasn’t used to Dutch anymore, talking with people at the guesthouse hadn’t brought me back to being day-to-day fluent in it. Trying a one-on-one translation from English to Dutch would make it sound insanely stupid, especially since I was clearly Dutch. I had to think this over a bit.

I
gave it another try in Dutch but wasn’t in the right headspace anymore. Talking Dutch was just like all those years ago in Holland, it brought my inability to game right back. I approached two black girls in English and got somewhere but conversation died after a few minutes. There were loads of Dutch people around and the local people automatically assume you’re Dutch if you’re white-skinned and speak Dutch to you. This meant the gringo factor was reduced to zero. It even worked against you in a club, because there are always lots of Dutch students there for a three- or six-month internship. Most of the guys were dorky and this rubbed off on the rest of us. My mood been ruined and the drinks went down quick and I left the club a bit disillusioned.

The day after
was Suriname Independence Day, and I went to see the military parade. The streets were filled with small stalls and I ate all kinds of quite tasty local foods. All the people were gathered around a big field and soldiers were parading around a bit. It started raining and it all took very long. There were a few regiments from neighboring Brazil and French Guyana along with the local ones. They were dressed really sharply and had ultra-modern machine guns. The French regiment was part of the infamous Foreign Legion, and was especially dressed to the nines. The Surinamese regiments, on the other hand, were poorly equipped, with old karabiner guns or machine guns from the Stone Age. Same with their tanks and some jeeps. I felt a bit sorry for them.

It
started raining hard and most people looked for shelter. I got really bored by the slow progress of the whole thing and went back to the guesthouse. It was time for some rest and to get ready for the night again. I went out to a club named Zsa Zsa Zsu, but got there too early. There weren’t many people inside when I arrived, and I sat at the bar and got drunk. The bouncer told me that it was a Surinamese music night, and I was interested, but soon decided he wasn’t so much telling me as warning me. In most countries I like the local music but this time I couldn’t stand it. I made a few approaches, but without success.

The
next day being Saturday, I of course went out. I went back to the same place as the day before. I had some manning-up to do. I decided to speak English only and did quite a few approaches that night while pounding a lot of beers. A glass of local Parbo beer costs seven-and-a-half Surinamese dollars, which is like two-and-a-half US dollars.

A
Dutch guy walked up to me and we talked a bit. There were so many beta white guys around, the type who would probably wine and dine a girl, that I was getting the feeling that girls weren’t looking for quick romance.

Me
and the guy went to another room in the club where the music was more quiet and the atmosphere more relaxed. That part of the club was a big surprise, because I hadn’t even seen it the night before. I felt a bit more confident and stepped up to some girls standing by. One of the girls seemed to like me from the get-go and I danced with her a bit. The Dutch guy just stood there drinking his beer and looking at us.

The
girl, Vickie, was wearing a sexy red dress, had long hair and a light-skinned complexion. She wasn’t exactly a girl anymore, but a woman. She didn’t like to speak English with me after she found out I also spoke Dutch. The guy I’d been talking to had disappeared.

After
some making-out on the dance floor and a drink, we headed back to my room. She had her own car and that saved me some money on the cab fare, because at night taxi drivers really know how to fuck a white guy over, even though they’re all very polite and like to talk a lot. Suriname people are very friendly and super-relaxed.

We
arrived at my guesthouse and the night guard saw us but didn’t make any problems. He was a very nice guy I’d talked to a few times before going out. It wasn’t even forbidden to bring girls back to your room as long as you paid double the next day. If it had been against the rules I still would have sneaked her in and taken the risk of getting kicked out the next day.

We
went up to my room and she went to the bathroom to freshen up, so did I after. We kissed and talked a bit while I was taking her clothes off. I couldn’t fail anymore! My honor was saved!! That Suriname flag was mine!!!! Mwahahahahahaaaa!!!!!!!!!

Just
to make sure I asked her how long she’d lived in Suriname, and then she gave me the following answer:

“I
’m living for eleven years in Suriname now but I’m from Brazil.”

In
my head I was cursing a lot. Why did I even ask? 

I
said something like “Oh, nice”. Apparently she’d lived in Suriname for a while, learned the Dutch language and had a few kids there. I was like
Damn, another Brazilian notch!! I need that Suriname flag; I can’t go to a former colony and not (re)capture the flag there
.

Unlike
the last Brazilian girl I’d had, this girl was totally not adventurous between the sheets. Afterwards she sneaked out the same way she came in. I never saw her again.

I
was disappointed and should have seen it coming. When I looked at her picture afterwards I could clearly see she was Brazilian, but the Suriname population is so diverse that it’s hard to tell in a club. Over a third of the population is of South-East Indian heritage, another third are Creoles and the rest are a mix of Maroons (escaped black slaves who started their own tribes in the jungle, also officially named “bush negroes”), Javanese from Indonesia, Chinese and Brazilians.

Day
gaming was pretty much pointless since I didn’t really see many hot girls around and it was very hot outside during the day, with high humidity. All that smoking and drinking made me slow during the day.

But there were some consolations.
One of the greatest things about Suriname was that they sold imported Dutch food. I didn’t realize that until I saw Dutch cookies at a supermarket. I bought everything Dutch I could find and came back to the guesthouse with two grocery bags full of Dutch candy and cookies. It is very hard to find the Dutch candy named “drop” outside of Holland. I knew I was going to destroy my bowels and libido (drop is bad for that), but ate it anyway.  The only warm meals I ate in those four days were grilled-cheese sandwiches or some roti, an Indian dish.

Although
I liked it a lot in Suriname, the Dutch food made me long to go back to Holland even more. Food’s like that: you taste something from your childhood or from home and you just want to go back there. I had to say goodbye to Suriname after only four days in the capital. Time was running out and I had to move on to the “European” part of South America: French Guyana.

French Guyana

The three-day trip to French Guyana will give a good view on a true off-the-beaten-track travel experience. Though most of the life-on-the-road horror is edited out of the book to save pages, here I’ll give you a detailed insight on the shit you can get yourself into while travelling, just so you can’t say I didn’t warn you. I think I said it before but I will say it again. Budget travel will toughen any man up. You’ll need lots of patience, creativity, willpower and persistence.

I
left the guesthouse in Paramaribo early in the morning and walked to the bus station. It wasn’t too far, but enough that you got there with a soaking wet sweaty t-shirt. My backpack weighed around twenty-three kilos and was filled with lots of cookies and candy, a hammock I bought at a local market the day before and a liter bottle of water. I bought a ticket and the woman behind the counter informed me the bus would arrive somewhere around 1:00 PM. I had to keep an eye on all the buses going in out the dusty square to make sure I found the right one. I smoked a cigarette and sat down to wait. People at the guesthouse had offered me the tourist taxi to the border, which cost seventy US dollars, but I laughed at them and said I would take the local bus there. A local bus cost only two-and-a-half dollars, so I’d already saved a shitload of money.

A
big black woman was breast-feeding her baby right in front of me. I didn’t know where to look because I didn’t want to be rude, being the only white guy there looking at some giant hooters. She had the biggest nipples I had ever seen in my life. They must have been almost an inch long and I was shocked and intrigued at the same time. The woman just smiled a few times when I took a few peeks. The local bus arrived and I found a space next to the window in a single row of seats. The bus had about eighteen seats and drove with all the windows and even the door open.

We
drove straight to another and bigger bus station where we had to wait for a while. Some other passengers joined us and the bus was now packed with people. My backpack was in the back of the bus and was big enough that it basically used up a seat. A skinny woman – well, I’m not entirely sure it was a woman, but I think so – wanted me to take the bag on my lap so she’d have more arm space. I refused because I was already packed in between other passengers; the walkway in the middle of the bus had fold-out seats that were now all filled. She started grumping, but I just said no to her.