ICELAND AIN’T GOT NOTHING ON YOU, SAO PAULO

When I traveled to Iceland in 2006, they had the most expensive prices I’ve ever seen - A value meal at McDonalds was about $18, a jacket was about $400. Well Iceland, you’ve been one-upped! Sao Paulo is absolutely the most expensive city in the Western Hemisphere! This past Sunday, Valentines Day here in Brazil, I went to the Morumbi Shopping Mall near our hotel with my coworker C… her bag was lost on the way here, so she needed some new kicks, and I really wanted a new pair of jeans. The mall was insanely packed, almost like it was Christmas Eve, and it was also insanely huge. I was so overwhelmed by all the stores and styles and people that I couldn’t even get a grip and start to look at clothes. Finally, on the basement level in a not so crowded corner, I saw a Levi’s store… Score! I thought I would be able to get a decent pair of new jeans for not so much money. I found a pair of skinny jeans that I really liked and they looked pretty cool when I tried them on – but when I looked at the price, they were 259R, or about $165. I’ve seen expensive Premium Levi’s in the USA before, and they were about $140, so I thought that these were most likely a premium pair of Levis. So against my better judgment, and due to the fact that I get extremely grumpy if I waste time shopping and don’t buy anything, I decided to buy the Levis. If you know me well, you know I don’t mind spending money if its something really nice, but you also know that I always try to get a good deal, and that I hate to get ripped off. Well, I should have just left well enough alone and enjoyed my new ‘expensive’ jeans… but of course I had to look them up on the Levis USA website – and they are selling for only $45! I was shocked. The pants I bought in Brazil cost 4 times as much as they do in the USA! I totally got ripped off. So what did I do? I immediately ordered the jeans from the USA website to have them shipped to my friends who are coming to visit me here in a few weeks, and I thought I would just return the jeans to the mall ASAP and get my money back. Problem solved.



Wrong. Brazil is just like Italy – buyer beware. The next morning when I told my local Brazilian coworker M of my plans to return the pants, she said ‘I don’t think so, not here in Brazil.’ She said she’d come to the mall with me and try to talk to the sales people. So that night I went back to the mall C and M and we brought the pants into Levis. The sales people pretty much acted like I was insane, and the first person to ever ask for a refund! The told me I could exchange the pants for something else, but everything in the store is super expensive – so I’m pretty much paying 4 times the price no matter what I get.

So I’m onto plan B now, where I emailed Levis in the USA and Brazil, and posted messages about them on both Facebook and Twitter. Tonight I got a Facebook message back from Levis Brazil to give them more information – so I’m going to have my coworker M email them tomorrow in Portuguese. Hopefully I’ll get lucky and they will help me out, but I am doubtful. But mark my words… I will not spend one more penny of my own money in this country! That’s actually not true, but I feel really strong about this… haha. Time for a consumer rights revolution in Brazil!

To round out the listing of other overpriced items in Brazil: Drinks at the bar are $15 each. A Honda Civic costs $40,000. A North Face jacket is about $650. An iPhone is $2,000, with a 2 year agreement. And dental floss is $8. And yes, and I paid the $8 because I ran out of dental floss on day 3!!!

And... get this: The average starting salary out of college is only around $1,000 a month! And after 10 years of work the average salary is only around $55,000! I don’t know how these people do it. I would have gotten arrested a long time ago for stealing if I lived here... seriously people!

So I feel a little taken advantage of now, but I am pushing it aside and having a good time anyway. My trip to the mall sums up what I think of Sao Paulo so far – a big, confusing, overpriced, mess – but I still kind of like it! Tchau for now. That’s Ciao, in Portuguese :)

WELCOME TO SAO PAULO, DOES ANYONE SPEAK ENGLISH HERE?!

For the second leg of my trip I was back in cattle class because my upgrade didn’t manage to clear – but that was okay because I was on a brand new plane again and I had the second exit row with a ton of legroom and full recline! The flight was really long but once they rolled the bar cart down the aisle (Copa has an open bar, for everyone), people started to talk and most of the flight was pretty loud and had a party atmosphere. I didn’t meet any “Panama Greg” characters on this trip, but about an hour before landing I started talking to the kid sitting across the aisle from me. H works for GE in NYC kind of doing the same thing as me, and was traveling to Sao Paulo for a 2-month business trip. We got to talking more, and as it turns out, he is from Hillsborough, NJ – which is not too far from where I grew up. So he’s been to a lot of the same places I’ve been to in Princeton. Small world! He lives in NYC now and travels all the time for work. Once we talked a little more I found out his hotel was right next to my hotel, so he asked if I wanted to split a taxi. Since DIRECTV arranged for a car service to pick me up, I told him he could bum a ride.

H is 25 and pretty energetic – he told me he was out all night and came to the airport drunk for his flight to Brazil! On the way to our hotels he kept talking about going out, so he convinced me to go out and get ‘a drink’ with him. I was pretty tired, considering I took a red eye, followed by another 7 hour flight – but I didn’t want to be anti-social, and I figured ‘what the hell, I’m on the other side of the world,’ so I told him I was game. So we met up at about 1130 and got some recommendations from the hotel front desk. They kept telling us to go to the club in the hotel, but that seemed lame, and H kept saying he wanted a high end bar with good music, so we ventured out to an area called Via Olympia.Via Olympia seemed kind of hood, but there were 7 or 8 bars in a 2 block area, so the taxi dropped us off and we checked out the scene. There were a few low key places and a jazz club – all of which looked cool and would have been perfect for the ‘drink’ we were supposed to get – but H didn’t seem happy. Not happy at all. In fact, he was like ‘there is no where to go!’ So then we saw an Irish Pub and it had a line about a mile long to get in… must be a novelty here in Brazil! So we decided no Irish pub. Then H started asking people on the street where would be good to go – but we had one problem. No one spoke any English! Maybe people here do speak English, but they weren’t willing to speak it with us! It was a little strange, and a little embarrassing for us – but we basically walked around until we found a group of 3 girls and one spoke English. They told us they were going to Rey Castro to Salsa. So H made us go to Ray Castro! There was a steep 40R cover to get in ($25) and they gave each of us this credit card thing when we walked in. Apparently you pay the cover and for all your drinks when you leave. Interesting concept – I was thinking about jumping out of the window! So Rey Castro’s was pretty interesting – lots of young people with salsa/top 40 mixed together. Everyone was Salsa dancing, so I felt a little out of place, cuz I was just there with my new bud H and I have no clue how to Salsa and NO ONE spoke any English! I felt like one of the foreigners we see out at Sharkeez, that only know how to order ‘American Beer’ – and H was getting a little annoyed and quickly developed bar A.D.D. and made us peace out. When we left my tab was 65R ($40) for the cover and 1 mojito, so it pretty much cost over $1 per minute to hang out at Rey Castro’s!

At this point I could have called it a night, it was around 1am, but H was determined to have a big night. He was a little overwhelmed by all the Brazilian women (who are, by the way, pretty amazing), and he pretty much couldn’t contain himself! So he started talking to some taxi drivers and asking what club we could go to. One of them mentioned this club Cabaret so H said ‘take us there!’ We rolled up to the doors of Cabaret around 130am, and surprise-surprise, the girl at the door didn’t speak a drop of English… so she had to get a bouncer who knew English to tell us it was 120R to get in ($75), but you get to charge up 120R worth of alcohol. I immediately thought what a bad idea this was – especially since I couldn’t have more than 1 drink (thanks to my meds from my broken foot). But H insisted and told me he would pay… haha – this kid really wanted to get his party on (and probably something else on).

So we went in to Cabaret and we were handed the same credit card things to charge our drinks – must be a Brazilian thing. Cabaret was actually really cool – it was a big two-story lounge/club that kind of reminded me of an extra large version of Shore in Hermosa Beach (if you’ve been to Shore – think about the light show on the wall). The DJ was playing really good music too – so we got some drinks and walked around a little. This club could have been in California (good looking people and laid back), NYC (way expensive), or the Jersey Shore (guido-esq dancers)… it had all different races of people – most of them good looking – but no one spoke any English! It was the weirdest thing ever! Even at the clubs I’ve been to in Europe – everyone speaks English – and here, no one!



H was getting pretty wasted, and I was nursing my drink since I already had one at the last bar and couldn’t really drink this one. But we started to try to talk to people again – with not much luck. Finally we found this group of 3 girls and 1 of them spoke English – they looked pretty young – but we started talking to them. H bought them all beers, and I decided to play ‘wing man’ and try to hook him up since it was obvious that that’s what he was looking for. So after some small talk with the 1 English speaker, I pretty much started negotiating with her. I said ‘my friend likes your friend’ and she replied ‘him want to make bed with her?’ and I said ‘Yes! Her want to make bed with him?’ and she said ‘Yes!’ – and the deal was done. They started m-ing out! I found out that they were all 21 years old too!

So the night kept going on, and the music was really good, but I was getting tired and H just making out with this 21 year old wasn’t going anywhere – I thought I was going to fall asleep standing up, but then around 4am I heard the most amazing thing… Barbra Streisand by Duck Sauce, mixed to a latin beat ! For those of you that don’t know – I kind of have an inside joke about this song with some of my friends – so hearing this mix when I was in the super-tired, quasi-emotional mood made me super excited and completely energized me, and all of the sudden, I was pretty happy to be in Brazil! The good times started again – and we partied at Cabaret with the girls until 5am on Sunday morning – when they promptly ran out! Dissed.

H kept asking me if they really just did that. He was like ‘did they even say goodbye?’ Nope. That was fine with me – I was ready for bed after pretty much being up since Friday morning at 6am! But I was happy I rocked Sao Paulo on night one. Now I was ready to conquer Brazil!

PANAMA GREG

So let’s start with getting down to Brazil… after a little mix up on the way to the airport where I forgot some important items at home (thanks to Tim and Ali taking me, twice) I checked in for my flight and was pretty excited to make it to the President’s Club with 30 minutes to spare. Well an old drunk guy who happened to be right in front of me in the security line got held up at the checkpoint and delayed what could have been a 2-minute process. He looked pretty pissed off, but I was even more pissed off because I knew he was cutting into my time in the lounge. After security stopping the line for what seemed to be an eternity, I finally made it though with about 10 minutes left before the lounge closed.

I thought about not even going, but I wanted to take advantage of the international lounge access, and I thought at a minimum I would just run and see what they had to offer at the LAX President’s Club. So I rang the doorbell and got buzzed in. Upon walking in, the old lady at the front desk immediately said ‘the bar just closed and the lounge closes in 7 minutes,’ so I said ‘that’s okay, I just want to check it out…’ and she looked disgusted and just stared at me. About 30 seconds later she was like ‘really, for 7 minutes?’ and I replied ‘yes please’ and handed her my ticket. ‘Enjoy your 7 minutes.’

Hmm – so not a great start, and not such a nice way to welcome a Business Class passenger… but whatever, I had some positive energy so I wasn’t going to let some old bag spoil my time. So I checked out the lounge, nothing special – but at least I grabbed 3 bags of chips and some granola bars from the snack area before heading to the gate.

The COPA gate at LAX is pretty hood. I think there are about 20 seats, and there is a bootleg COPA sign, and they share the gate with Spirit and another no-name airline (Sun Country maybe?). Also, the agents didn’t even use a microphone, they just screamed out ‘boarding Business Class!’ We even had a mic when I worked at Eastwind Airlines in the Trenton Airport with Cheryl back in 1999! So I get on the plane, and of course my carry on bag didn’t fit into the overhead, so I pretty much had to repack the whole thing in the aisle, and now I was holding up the whole boarding process! Finally I repacked everything and made it to my seat, and who was sitting next to me but the drunk guy that was holding up the security line!

So I said to him “Hi, I’m sitting in there” and he didn’t even get up from his seat, I had to climb over him. The flight attendant came by after and introduced himself to us, and asked how we were doing, and the drunk said something in Spanish (which I thought was weird since he was super white looking and wearing a US Marines cap) – and the flight attendant just looked puzzled and scratched his head. Then he repeated it, and then he said ‘I said, please put a bullet in my head.’ And the flight attendant didn’t know what to say, so he replied ‘oh my, not on the plane, Sir.’ Haha – I was in for an interesting flight. Still, even with everything going wrong tonight – I was still pretty happy – the plane was brand new and one of the first planes with the new Boeing Sky Interior (plane of the future), and I was in Business Class on my way to somewhere completely new!



Luckily after take off the drunk took a few pills along with 2 Bloody Mary’s, and was passed out within 20 minutes. The flight attendant tried to wake him up for the snack, but this guy was too far-gone. I slept for most of the night, and I woke up somewhere over Guatemala when they were about to serve us breakfast. The drunk was still passed out but he woke up when I got my breakfast. He reached into his pocket, pulled out a $20 bill, and called the flight attendant over. He handed it to him and said ‘keep the drinks coming!’ And after about 3 more Bloody Mary’s the guy starts talking to me. He ends up telling me how he is from Texas but has lived in Panama for the past 6 years since it’s a tax haven – he is the heir to a fortune from a clothing manufacturer that was big in the 1940s. Now him and most of his siblings live in Panama and he has a farm there and sits on the board of some philanthropic organization. He was talking about all his money (strange) and he asked where I was going so I told him Sao Paulo. He got pretty excited and said he would explain to me how things work in South America. He told me once I got there to tell the hotel I need to get set up with a ‘bed partner’! He said they’d teach me the language, cook for me, clean, and keep me warm at night! He said refuse to pay more than $8 a day. He said if you pay more they’ll get too attached. He told me he does it everywhere he goes! I said ‘even in LA’ and he said ‘even in LA!’ At this point I knew this guy was a kook, but I just played into his bagger for fun. He then went on to tell me he rides a mule around his farm and keeps a machete to keep his employees scared. He said two of them owe him $12,000, and that he was going to cut their heads off if they didn’t pay soon – then we both laughed… Pretty sick, haha! The plane couldn’t touch down fast enough, but when it did, he gave me his business card, and he told me to call him next time I’m in Panama and he’ll make sure he takes care of me. I looked at the card, and said ‘thanks Greg, good talking to you’ and thought to myself not in a million years!

This was one of my most awkward/ scary in flight conversations ever – but overall it made for an interesting time, and the flight service was pretty bomb too – good job COPA! Next it was time for my 7.5 hour flight from Panama to Sao Paulo, I could only imagine if it would be as interesting...

BRAZIL

HOLA from the southern side of the world where the water in the toilet flushes the other way! I know I don't usually blog, but I want to get back into it so I can post some stories from my 42 day trip to Brazil!

So now that I’ve been in busy Brazil for a few days, I wanted to update you guys on my travels. I think I definitely prepared myself for a worst-case-scenario before I left the USA (dirty, crime ridden, scary, boring), and the trip has actually gone pretty decently so far, and I'm border-line having a good time and really starting to like Brazil! So stay tuned for posts about my trip!