 I don't mind if you go to Macau and it's okay if you have fun, just don't fall in love with anybody. So I was like in heaven, right? All of us have been scamming you and I just wanted to say sorry. And he said, you're going to have a really big problem in the next 24 hours. You keep the phone. It's $1,000 US for an iPhone. They cloned the phone, but they added videos and pictures of children. Ed, how are you, sir? Good. How are you doing, Chris? Thanks for having me today. Oh, it's an absolute pleasure. For our friends at home, we've had similar sort of experiences in Asia getting ourselves into or either getting ourselves into trouble or other people getting us into trouble. So yeah, what happened, mate? Well, I lived in LA back in 2009 and I had a couple of attorney buddies that went to Macau every three months that go and they'd stay for about a week and they would just brag about it. They're like, oh, you got to go to Macau. Oh, you got to come with us. You got to come with us. Oh, the women, the women, the saunas, the women are like, they're all like 19, 20, 21 years old and they're just amazing and there's like hundreds of them and they just kept telling me to go. And I was in a relationship with a girl and we broke up about, I'd say maybe about almost a year prior until I finally relented and said, okay, I'll go. So I went and needless to say, I mean, it definitely met every expectation they built up in my head. And I went to a place called the, I don't know, have you been to Macau? Yes, only once. Should we explain where it is for all? Yeah, yeah, Macau is basically, if you fly into Hong Kong, the way you can fly into Macau, sometimes depending on where you're coming from, but there's not a lot of direct flights there. But you take a ferry, it's about a one hour ferry ride from Hong Kong. And it's a little island that China, it's supposedly its own deal like Hong Kong, but China exerts a lot of control on Macau. And it's actually has four, I think four or six times the gambling revenue of Vegas, which is, I was surprised when I heard that. So I guess Asians are very heavy gamblers, so that's probably the reason why. It was a Portuguese enclave, wasn't it, claimed by the Portuguese. And now it's just got the pretty spectacular casinos. Yeah. I don't know if I'm, Ed, I don't know if you want to sort of sit back and sit stillish, because you're getting the, oh, okay, you're getting the zoom thingy, the zoom halo. So, but over to back over to you. Yes. So, so I went and I went to the Golden Dragon Casino, and they have a sauna inside it called the 18 sauna. And I saw this Vietnamese girl, she was beautiful, ended up like really liking her a lot and fell in love with her, not that day, obviously, but I got her phone number ended up going, ended up going back to Macau three weeks later. And then about a month and a half after that, I went to Vietnam with her for seven weeks to figure out if I was going to move there or not, which I ended up doing a few months after that. So for my first time going to Macau in July of 2009, I moved there for good in February 24 of 2010. So I moved to Vietnam, where she was from. But little did I know the whole thing was a scam, you know, like these triads, they, the triads own all the, all the saunas. And they get the girls to look for marks and people they think have money. And I was basically a mark. I mean, like they get you, they try to get you to fall in love with the girl. And then they'll have the girl be with you for a while. And the girl has like a support team of all these criminals in the background. And like they like, they'll hack your devices. Like she had a malicious USB device that she would plug into my computer and it would like take the computer over. And I'm really good with technology. I used to have a software company, even though I'm an attorney. And so as good as I am, I mean, they just, they really had me. It was, there's, and then after they isolate, what they think is all your money and figure out how much you have, then they separate you from being able to talk to your family and friends. And they either steal your money or they find a way to kill you. And if you married the person, that person will get all the money. I mean, it was just insane what they did. Like after I moved over there, I didn't realize I was really under attack for the first year. I mean, like they were really patient. But then once, once the gloves came off, I mean, it was just unbelievable. It's, I'm like, I was trying to call. This is like how, how bad it is with the technology. I was trying to call my mother and I kept like hitting her phone number on Skype. And this is back in 2011. And I kept hitting her phone. Like I kept hitting mom on, just on the contacts. And whenever I kept getting her voicemail and it's like, and I kept leaving messages for like three weeks. And I don't know what it was. I just had this six cents. I'm like, I'm going to dial her phone number on the dial pad rather than hitting her contact. Because I know my mom always answers the phone. So as soon as I dialed it, she answered right away and she's like, I didn't get messages from you at all. So the thing they did was they listened to the people that I called for months. So if I called you and your voicemail said, hi, this is Chris. They would record your voicemail because they had me hacked. They had a man in the middle setup. And then once they have your voicemail and everybody that I talked to, they put it on their own server and they move you over to their server. So that way you can't call and have an SOS or have somebody help you out because they control everything. So that was one of the ways I figured things out. But some of the more clever scams that they did, like, do you mind if I go on these, on these tangents? I mean, I don't know how you like to do the interview, but it's just like some of these stories are, it might take me 10 minutes to tell one story. They're really interesting, but I just didn't know how you like to handle it. Yeah, I think Edward, we should perhaps clarify for the wider audience, perhaps people that haven't been in Asia, what the situation is with working girls, why they do this job, and why a lot of Westerners go there and fall in love and fall in love with working girls. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. For me, the reason I was attracted to it, even though she was a working girl, I was just in a relationship with an LA woman for like two years. And I paid off her credit cards to the tune of like $87,000. And then a couple months after that, she wanted to have a kid and I'm like, I don't want to have a kid. So I decided to break it off. And I come home and like all my clothes, like she like ripped the clothes out of the closet. And she, I had all the, I mean, it was just the most vindictive thing. And I said, I'm just tired of these American women. So when I went over there, I didn't judge because I mean, these girls, they come from nothing. And I know that the family probably pushed them into it. And I just like their salt of the earth innocence and not, I guess innocence might be a bad word because it's anything but with my story. But it's just like, I just, I was attracted to the, to the Asian culture and the way that women are, they seem to be submissive. They're not, they're not always arguing with you and like just being too combative all the time. And I was, I was tired of those kind of women in Los Angeles. Now, but the way that they get into it, most of the girls, usually nine times out of 10, their parents are like their, their parents are losers, like their, their father, like all the girls that I met from Vietnam, all the fathers were gamblers and they cheated on their wives and, and they, a lot of them got raped by their father when they were kids. So I mean, like these were like the devils of the devil in, in Vietnam. So are there good girls that just do it to help their family out? No, I don't think so. Usually, the way that it works is the father has, has gambling debts and the father can't pay them to somebody says, Hey, you have this beautiful daughter, you know, we can, we can take care of those gambling debts, but you got to give us her. And that's how most of these girls get into, they get trafficked into the business due to the fault of their families getting in debt and things like that. Can I just, I'll just come in there and say in Hong Kong, certainly the clubs or the club I ended up working in the, a lot, a lot of the Filipinos would, would get a visa to Hong Kong as a cleaner or a nanny or some sort of domestic service. Exactly. Many of them really, and I'm not saying this in any way, judgmental for anyone that's listen, I'm just trying to explain for people that just hear the word. I say working guilt because I think the other terms are derogatory and I don't like them. Yeah. You in Hong Kong, actually called bar, bar girls. Yeah. And with the Filipina Filipinas, a lot of them can make so much money working the bars, even if it's just getting the foreigners to buy them drinks. Yeah. That they, they, many of them can't wait to get out their contract with the people that sponsored them into Hong Kong. Yeah. So, so a rich family will say, Hey, we'll get some Filipina from Manila is going to come and look after our children, do our cleaning, and then the, the, the Filipina will say, yeah, but I can earn like that much doing that. It's pretty much minimum, minimum wage. I can go to the bars and I can chat to, I don't know, a serviceman all night and he's buying me drinks and they have a thing called a number. Yeah. It's just, you don't see the number, but it's a secret number and the bartender every time this, the guy buys her a drink, it's secretly written down under the bar and she gets all the, all the, all the sort of commission. So there's that. I also wanted to add that the, the, the thing with Westerners going over to Asia is you're, you're a young man in the West. You're terribly insecure because we live in a culture of damage and fear, not, not just young men, obviously as a community and relationships are tough. You don't feel worthy of the, the good looking girls. And, and let's be honest that there's, there's that thing where, you know, you try and chat up a nice, you know, pretty girl and she turns around and puts you in your place. You feel pretty awful and, and these things psychologically are quite, quite damaging. So you take that person and suddenly fly them to Asia for 500 bucks. And, and you see, let's just say for cliche sake, some of the most beautiful women in the world. Yeah. And they're all over you. And yeah, we know it's essentially it's driven my money, not, not, not always. But it's suddenly, or, you know, it's good for your confidence. It's good for your way of being. And the fact that they're a bar girl, that the bar is paying them or, or whatever it might be, it kind of pales it into a significant insignificance over there, because it's so accepted. And am I saying that people should sell that? No, of course I'm not. But so, but of course, in my club, as with all the red light districts or gangland districts of the world, it's run by the local mafias in Hong Kong. It's, it's, it's the triads. Macau also, I'm sure Vietnam has their same, same, but they have triads and they have the local version of the triads. And it can all get very nasty and, and manipulative. And then if you chuck a few, can we say substances in there as well, then it's just, it's, it's a recipe for disaster. Sorry, I just wanted to, you know, there'll be people listening that just won't, like I don't want them hating us from the start. It's, we're all human. We've all got to live on the same planet. And, you know, we do some good things. We make some mistakes and and hopefully we've become better people for it. Yeah, definitely. Yeah, so I mean, so when I got over there, it was just, and I know the, I realized that most of my value was, was the fact that I had money and I was okay with that because I mean, I knew that they were desperate and they didn't have money. So I, I like did things like I bought nine motorcycles for her, her father and his brothers and his sister and everybody. I, I would pay, there was a lady that we had as our nanny, I paid her, it was only a hundred bucks a month to have her there. And then I also paid her aunt because I ended up getting this girl pregnant and we had a son. And so I was really generous with everybody over there. And I just, it's the stupid part of me. I mean, I think all of us have a life path. And I think we have certain things that we have to do. And I think that I was very naive, but I think I had to be naive for the story to play out. And it's like, when I look back now, I think, Oh, why was I so stupid? Like, why didn't I notice this? Why didn't notice that? But I just kept thinking, Hey, I'm generous. And why would they try to steal all my money when I'm taking care of everybody? I thought, I thought they would get my back and little did I know I was wrong. And so I ended up the way that everything went down, like, so my, my ex had, oh, she's dead now, by the way, she died two years ago from cancer of the uterus at the age of 32. So, and I have my son, I was able to escape Vietnam and bring him back to America. So I got really lucky. And my son is 10 years old. Now he's a great kid. He's happy. He's settled. He doesn't really have too many memories of her. So it's not, it's not that big of a deal when it comes to that. But it's like, but when I was over there at first, I didn't know, I didn't know I was under attack. I guess I'll tell you like one of the biggest scams they did on me, I call it the airplane scam. And I remember you and that inspector, that podcast you did with that, that police inspector from Hong Kong. One of the things you guys were talking about, I think was was it foreign triads? Do you call it a foreign triad or something like that? Yeah, that's kind of a feature in my book, eating smoke. That's my first memoir for anyone that's not aware. And yeah, it was always told to me triads will work with anyone if they think they can make a buck. But you can only become a triad if you're a pure, pure, blooded Chinese. Otherwise, you're just not, you're not trusted. And the foreign triad in essence was, it's only been written about in one article, but it was the foreigners, so the Westerners, the Filipinas, the Indians, whoever it might be that they all make up a significant part of the population in Hong Kong. It's where they get together and they form their own triad, who in essence basically run errands for the pure, blooded Hong Kong triad in my employees with a 14K. And so in my club, there's a lot of Westerners just got on really well with the triads and still a bit of a gray area for me in terms of understanding, to be honest. But have you, are you familiar with this sort of thing? Yeah, I was in one of the scams they used to do, like I used to go, my ex had all these Vietnamese friends that also worked at the sauna, obviously. So when I was living in Vietnam, she was like, Hey, I know you're bored here. And I don't mind if you go to Macau and it's okay if you have fun, just don't fall in love with anybody. So I was like in heaven, right? So I go stay at her friend's house and would do drugs the whole time and everything else. I never did, I never did ice until I got to Macau. It was her and her friends that got me to do it. And it was, you know, and I haven't done it in America since I've come back and I don't plan on doing it. It's not something that I'm like, Oh, God, I got to go have something. It's like, I got, I'm pretty good with getting away from things like I have an addictive personality, but I can also walk away when I logically think, okay, maybe it's just some good idea anymore. Like I've been doing it too long, or maybe my money's going to be running out in about a year. If I have a habit that's not going to work out. So I'm able to logically talk myself out of stuff pretty good. So I didn't do it over here. But when I was over there, we used to go, when I was in Macau with her friends would go to these nightclubs. And one of them was called DD, it was called DD3. And DD3 was a triad club. And my friends, the American lawyers that I was friends with, they said, Hey, don't go to DD3. There's DD2 and there's DD3. I may be mixing them up, but one of them is the triad club. The other one is like a disco where mostly Westerners go. And so her friends would take me to this triad club. And I saw one of her friends, like that a guy, this, he was a big guy too. He was about my height. I'm six foot three, 230. So he was about my height, Chinese guy. And he got up in the girl's face. And he went to smack her and it I could tell what was a fake smack. It was just like a little bit of a tap. And so I didn't take it serious. But then her Vietnamese friends looking me like, you know, like, like, aren't you going to help her? Right. So I stood up and I got I stood up right next to the guy and just stared at him and no fear. And the guy just looked at me with a smirk. And then whenever we left and went back to her friend's condo, her friend who was married to a triad said to the triad, Oh, I heard her I overheard her saying he didn't he didn't back down like rocks. And so I'm like back down like rocks. What was this? Now I realize it was a test. They wanted to see if I was a punk, because if I was a punk, then they can execute several different scams to get my money, scare me into paying them. So another thing they did was that same girl that supposedly got smacked, her husband was a triad, but he was from Thailand. And he had four wives and she was one of them. And they tried to get me to sleep with her. But she was like, I like I like petite chicks. I mean, I don't like tall chicks. So she was too tall. I didn't think she was attractive. So I didn't sleep with her. But but the plan was to get me to sleep with the triad's wife and then extort me. You know, I mean, so that didn't work out. But then another time we went to DD this other, we went to the American disco that DD DD two or DD three, I get a mixed up. I don't know why I can't remember which one's which. And there was I was sitting there with all her friends. And I had a couple bottles. And these two dudes came up and we're like standing there. And it was a and it was a black guy and an Indian guy from India. And you don't see many black guys and Indian guys together in Macau. I mean, it's just like very shiny. So that'll become relevant later. But they were just kept like standing there right next to the table smiling at the girls. And the girls are looking at me like with this look of the whole thing was a setup. I realized that now. And then the guy and I said, Hey, dude, I said, Fuck off. And he's like, What? He's like, I said, Fuck off. And then the guy and he and there was nobody in the club, we were upstairs. It just opened about an hour an hour prior. And these two guys turned towards the top of the stairs and said, Do you believe this guy? And I looked over and I saw three Chinese dudes. And I call I call this guy the Swiss. It was a blonde dude with bobbed hair, like right here, like you couldn't forget the guy. And all and so there was this blonde haired guy with the three Chinese guys. And as soon as those those two guys looked over, they hurried up and they turned their head away when they saw me look over at them. So and that became relevant six months later, because they tried to scan me on an airplane. And that guy with the blonde hair was on the airplane six months later, which there were 17 cops waiting for me in Vietnam when the plane landed. And I mean, I'll get to that later. It was insane. But so anyway, so those guys ended up leaving. And whenever I left the club, it's like three in the morning with her friends, those guys were standing there. And I was I was like, what's up now, fucker. And then the guy and they looked at me like, like petrified. And it was like, they were they were different than who they were in the club. It didn't make any sense. Right. So then about a month later, a friend of mine knew a guy in Macau. And he told me that there were these two cooks, he said, he said, he said, you can't go to DD2 anymore. He said, it's too dangerous. These two cooks a few months back that work at that work at the win, they got beat within an inch of their life. And he was like, and he's like, you know, and we knew one of the chefs that worked there, he said, you know, so and so and something. No, I don't know there's anybody over there is like, yeah, it's a it's a black guy and an Indian guy. And I said, you got to be fucking shitting me. Right. So so here's the black guy and the Indian guy. And they were the only ones that could have been in Macau. You're not going to have that. You never see black people in Macau. So the fact that I saw a black guy and an Indian guy together. And I put two and two together. And I realized the thing that they did was these guys got their ass beat within within an inch of their life. So they became the triads bitch after that. So the triads probably saw them and said, hey, do us a favor, go fuck with that guy over there. And whenever he said, hey, you believe this guy, that blonde guy with the three Chinese at the top of the stairs were the triads that set these guys up to go test my bravery again, you see what I'm saying? And it's like so that was the that's when I started like noticing, I'm like, what the hell's going on? But I still didn't really figure a lot of this stuff out until after the fact. But they ended up trying to, they tried to plant drugs on my in my suitcase on a flight from Hong Kong to Ho Chi Minh. And right when and I bought two tickets for her friend and the and the triad husband, and they were going to come back to Vietnam with me. And so I bought all three tickets in the end. So since I bought them, I picked the seats and they were sitting next to me. But the very next day, they're like, okay, well, we have to go to China first, we'll meet you at the airport. I'm like, okay, whatever. So right before I went to the airport, her friend gave me a bag and said, give this to my sister at the airport. And I had to take the ferry. So I was going to give it to her. And in the bag was a phone, some money and a necklace with jewels on it. And I'm like, okay, whatever. So as I'm on the ferry, that phone now I know was being GPS tracked. They knew exactly where I was. As soon as they knew that I was on the ferry and at the point of their return, that the triad husband called me and he said, dude, I got something to tell you. He said, we've been scamming you since day one. And I said, what? And he's like, all of us have been scamming you. And I just wanted to say sorry. And he said, you're going to have a really big problem in the next 24 hours. And I'm like, holy fucks, I'm one fucking crazy, right? So I get off the ferry and I get on that train to go to the airport. And I got off, I was so beside myself trying to call my ex and saying, you fucking whore, what did you do? And she's like, I didn't do nothing. I don't know what they're talking about. And I'm like, okay, whatever. So I got off at the wrong stop. And then the triad guy called me back and he's like, where are you? I said, I'm at the airport. And I thought I was off. I got off at the airport one. He's like, really? Because they knew where I was at. You know what I mean? So I got back on the train, made it to the airport, barely made it into the flight. Like they were getting ready to close the door. And the flight was only about 10% full. And it was a 747 jumbo. I've never seen a more empty big flight than that. So I go to sit in my seat and there's this old Vietnamese guy and a lady sitting in the two seats that they were supposed to have, the friends and the triad husband. And as soon as I sit down, the guy says to me, he's like, oh, he's like, so did you have fun seeing the girls in Macau? And I looked at him and I said, how did you know I was in Macau? And because I mean, how many people flying from Hong Kong wherever were in Macau? Maybe 5% if I'm going to take a guess, right? Most of them are coming from Hong Kong. So I said to him, and he said, he said, he said, where are you from? And I said, I said, Las Vegas when I was really from Los Angeles, I just wanted to see how you reacted. He said, Los Angeles. I said, no, Las Vegas. He said, Los Angeles. So I knew the guy was fucking with me. So I said, listen, dude, I said, how much is it going to cost for you to let one girl go? Like thinking about my ex, right? And he said, oh, he said 1200 US, right? So I said to him, I said, listen, Jack off. I said, you probably think I'm this fucking modeling looking guy. And I know that I'm naive. I said, but I promise you when I know who my enemy is, I will fucking destroy you. And I will win every time I say, get ready to lose. So I get up and I go into the bathroom with it because I'm thinking they had to put drugs in my fucking suitcase because what could the plan be? Right? So I go into the bathroom. I'm ripping through the suitcase. And within 30 seconds, bang, bang, bang, sir, sir, it's a flight attendant. Somebody said you took your suitcase and I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'll be like, no, sir, you got to come out now. I said, I'll be on the minute. I'm taking the shit. And then so I'm looking like firing. I couldn't find anything. And I ended up flushing that necklace down the toilet. Something just told me to get rid of the fucking necklace, right? But the phone wouldn't fit down the toilet because I thought something was up with the phone. So I ended up putting the phone in where like the toilet liners are. I just shoved it in there. And when I went outside and oh, yeah, by the way, dude, you're going to love this one. Before I went to the airport that day when I was at her friend's house, they were giving me ice every fucking minute, like lighting it for me, bringing it over, lighting it for me, bringing it over. They wanted me to be high off my fucking ass when I went to the airport, which I was. So here I am like on an ice high from hell, like breathing heavy. And I come out of the bathroom. I said, and they were all Australian guys, like Australian gay guys, like four of them. I swear it was so, so funny. It's like no women. They were all like a male flight attendants. And I said, listen, dude, I said, I know this looks bad. I said, here's what happened. I think somebody is setting me up that those two people should not be sitting in that seat over there. Those seats I bought for somebody else. I was in there looking for drugs in my bag to get rid of the drugs. And I would not have known that we're in there. And they believe me, they're like, they, and so, so they said, I said, do me a favor, call the police. And they said, well, we already did. We have to in a situation like this. So I knew there'd be like a welcome committee waiting for me when I got to Vietnam. But the guy said, Hey, just sit here in the back. And I'm some until the flight lands. So I'm sitting in the back. And as I'm sitting there, remember the plane's like 90% empty. These, these five, like four or five guys, they kept moving back two seats, waiting a minute, moving back a few more seats, waiting a minute until they basically had me surrounded the flight attendants were like, what the fuck is going on? You know, and one of the guys was that blonde motherfucker I saw at the club six months prior. It was him. So he was in, this is a foreign triad that was in on the scan with these jackoffs the whole time. So whenever we landed at the airport, they had two guys, everybody got off the plane except me. And there was two guys dressed up as Buddhist monks that were standing in the exit aisle. Right. And, and, and I look outside real quick. And I'm like, Ho Chi Minh City Airport does not have like a view of the fucking Rocky Mountains. I mean, it's like, it's just like a building. It's like, why would you be standing there? You're not taking in the scenery, right? So I looked at the guys, they get the fuck off the airplane. And they looked at me really angry. And they left now the purpose and the flight attendants were just like, holy fuck, they're just like watching everything unfold. The purpose of them was I was going to leave before them and they were going to be witnesses saying they saw me moving something or doing this or doing that. So they were going to be witnesses to put the icing on the cake. So then as soon as I walked outside, there's like 15 cops lined up in the corridor, waiting for me. And so I walked out and I'm like, did you get that fucking guy? And like, I was like, so remember, I'm, I stopped my ass too. So I'm like, like, I'm just like, it's like someone hooked up a generator to me. I was just like so full of energy and pissed off. And, and the cops were like, whoa, fuck, they like, they weren't ready for that. They were ready for some, somebody to come out on me and like, Oh, the police are here, you know. So I started talking to this cop that spoke English. And he's like, and I said, Hey, dude, I was, they were trying to set me up and I was very just like forceful with everything. Like I, I wouldn't let them, you never see like a, when a lion is in the wild and the lion's eating something and the hyenas surround the lion. And you know how that like the hyenas, they won't move in until the lion flinches, you know, as soon as the lion flinches even a tiny bit, the hyenas move in. I was forced in their face the whole time. Like they, I couldn't even give them a chance to change the energy. It was really strange. So I, so the guys, the guy says to me, he's like, Oh, well, you know, you got to take this phone. I said, dude, it's not my phone. I said, her friends gave it to me, but I was supposed to give it to them at the airport, but they didn't show up. I said, I don't know what the fuck's up. What's up with that phone, but it's not mine. And I'm not taking it. I think I'm being set up. I don't quite know how yet, but I'm not taking the phone. He's like, Oh, no, well, you got to take the phone. I said, I said, you know, I said, you keep it. You keep the phone. I said, it's a thousand dollars US for an iPhone at the time in Vietnam. I said, you keep the phone. And he's like, Oh, no, no, you got to take the phone. I said, I ain't taking the fucking phone. And then so finally he relented. And then the pilot of the airplane came out and he's walking towards customs with me. And he says, don't worry, we're not going to press charges. I said, why the fuck would you press charges against me? He said we're required to in this situation. So these triad cocksuckers are so good at planning these scams. They knew if they caused me to make a scene on the airplane, they knew that they would call cop, they would call ahead and get the cops there. And they knew that the pilot is required to press charges, which means I would have got taken into some room. They would have looked through my luggage and all this shit. And I would have been fucked. Now, for whatever reason, I think it was a gift from God that the pilot refused to press charges. And he told me, he said, he said, no, I refuse to press charges. I believe you. So then the guy ended up walking me out to the cop ended up walking me out to the curb. And then it was just like, and he said, let me see your passport. Like he was trying to arrest me, but I kept like facing him strong. And then he just eventually gave up. And then I ended up going back to my house. I threw my I threw my ex across the room. Then she it was just insane. I mean, and then the shit like really started after that. But here's the crate that that phone I told you about, you know what those fuckers did? They cloned. I found this out later. I found this out from a friend of a friend that knew them. They cloned the phone, but they added videos and pictures of children. They were trying to make me look like a fucking pedophile. And they also added text messages saying, I'm sending the money now. And I guess I thought it was drugs, but it was really that necklace that necklace was stolen from a museum. And I was going to get busted with this necklace. But here's the crazy part, Chris. I had I don't know this is where my naive stupidity came in. I had over $400,000 US cash in my house in Vietnam stuffed in the ceiling. And my ex helped me put it there. She could have went and took the money. And I'm like, why didn't they do it? And the insider I have said that I don't like to do it that way. It's they they just thought they like to play the game all the way. So that way you don't even realize who fucked you. You know what I mean? Like you're just with it. So basically I would have got arrested and the story would have been some rogue cop came in and searched the house and found the money and nobody knows where the fuck it's at. That's how that that's how they were going to play it out. But I ended up and I brought that money from Macau and I claimed it when I brought it in because at the time, I thought that the Chinese RMB was going to be worth. The Wall Street Journal said it's going to join the dollar. And if it does, it's going to go up 40%. So at the time, Bank of China wouldn't allow a non-Chinese citizen to have RMB in the bank account. So I had to take the money out that I had at Bank of China, which was in US dollars. And I went and I exchanged it on the street. So I had a suitcase that weighed like 120 pounds full of Chinese RMB 1.6 million Chinese RMB. And I had that stuffed in my ceiling. And I claimed it on the way into Vietnam, which the cops, everybody knew this American guy has all this money in his house. So that leads to like 50 other stories about people smashing bricks off my house, me like in a motorcycle escape to a four star hotel. I mean, that's the, that'll probably have to be another podcast, but it's just all this stuff went down and it was just, and they ended up stealing. My ex stole my customs declaration. So I had to smuggle the money out of Vietnam. I had no way to get it out. Guys, Vietnam's a communist country. You just can't go deposit it without some type of trail that says where it came from. So I couldn't get the money out. And I had to smuggle it to Singapore, which I did, but I got caught at the airport doing it. And the cop allowed me to pay him off. I gave him a $1,900 bribe and he let me take the money. So I got it either. But I know I hit you with a lot of shit right there. Do you want to elaborate or ask any questions about it? Where to begin? My gosh. I told you I'm going to go on a tangent once I start one of these stories. I apologize. Dude, it sounds like you've been getting yourself in a lot of trouble. Oh, yeah. So what's the connection then you going back to Vietnam? Why do you still have a connection with Macau? Are you going there on vacation or something? Yeah, just to have fun. That's it. Because I was so bored in Vietnam. I was just sitting in my office doing drugs. And I had nothing to do. I was just bored as hell. And I couldn't get her out of Vietnam. It was going to take a while to get her out of Vietnam, but she kept stalling. And I find out the reason she stalled is because she has a police record for doing some shit. And the last step of getting someone a visa is you have to get clearance from the police. And there's no way she would have got that. So she was stalling me on everything. So I was just living in hell over there for a couple of years. So let's start on something a bit more benign. What about your drug experience then? What stuff did you get hold of over there? Because Hong Kong's insane. It's in the Golden Triangle, right? But not just that. It seems to have quite a strong connection with South America, if I can say that. I mean, the stuff over there is just just thinking back in the day. Anything you wanted you can find in Hong Kong. Is that your experience? I only did ice. At least I thought I was only doing ice, but I ended up finding out later they were mixing drugs and they were trying to poison me and kill me with the drugs. And so there was, I probably had all kinds of other shit mixed in there with it sometimes. Because there were times where you know how you got to get ice ready. You got to burn it down a little bit, get it nice in the bottom and everything. So my ex, one time when I was over there, a few times it would happen. She wouldn't smoke with me or do it with me, right? But she would get it ready for me. She'd say, oh, yeah, yeah, here you do this whole thing. I'll be back in a little bit. And afterwards, like I got a nose bleed. And it was just like really strange. And I never shot anything. It was just always like, it was always like smoking it, you know? And so they were trying to poison me. A buddy of mine came to visit me and she made food for us and he fell asleep for two days. He wouldn't get up for two days. He was just like, you'd shake him. He'd be like, oh, and I ended up finding out later the bitch poisoned them. Like she was trying to, because I guess the poison wasn't killing me. So they wanted to make sure the poison was working. So she just poisoned both of us. And I don't know, I just, I had a way of fighting it off. I would just always get like a stomach ache. And I'd just have to go to the bathroom or something. And that was pretty much it. I almost died a couple of times when they poisoned me, when they gave me a lot. But I seemed to pull out of it, obviously. But it's just, yeah, so that's the only thing I had over there was ice. And yeah, that was it. And God knows what else they put in there sometimes, because it wasn't always the same type of high, you know? Okay. And tell us a bit about these tribes then. What's their demeanor? What do they dress like? How did they behave? Were they sort of tattoo bound? Not at all. And that that's the weird part is Hollywood made me, and I'm sure there's tons of them that are the tattooed bound looking like kind of guys, but these guys like look like they were supposedly legitimate businessmen. There's like, they had a lot of times they had suits on the her friend's husband who was a triad. He was like really good at computers. Yeah, obviously he was helping hack me. But they they didn't come off as this Hollywood stereotype of what you'd expect. So that's why it like, that's why it was so easy to take me off guard. And it's like, and they, they just, they smile at you, man. I mean, it's like, they just make you feel they know, they know that you're a fish out of water over there. They know you can't really speak to anybody. So they, they make you feel like family. It's the weird, it's the weirdest thing, but it's really easy to put your guard down over there, whenever you don't have anybody to talk to. Because I mean, anywhere you go, like part, hardly anybody speaks English. My, my ex spoke decent broken English, but the triads, the triad husband of her friend spoke really good English. And it's like, so there's, yeah, I mean, it was, I just didn't even realize what was going on. And then yeah, it was, it was tough getting out of there because I had a couple of dogs over it. I had my dogs over there too. So I had to get out of there. I got most of my money out to Singapore, but I still had a hundred grand US that I had to get out of there when I moved out of there in 2011. And, and I moved out of there, took my dogs back, dropped them off at my mom's house, three weeks later, went back again in hopes that I can get my son out of there. And, and I did, but it's, I almost didn't get out of there because it was like really, and then I even went back two more times after that, believe it or not, which doesn't make any sense to me, but I did it. How, how did you get your son out? I would imagine there's a lot of paperwork involved. Yeah, well, I got lucky because he was in America. You can have what's called a United States citizen born abroad. And so if you have a case, if you're an American citizen, and you have a kid with a foreigner, even though the kid is born on foreign land, you can go right to the embassy and say, Hey, it's my kid. And, you know, so I want to make him an American citizen. So my son was issued like, like where I'm at right now in Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania is one of 50 states in the United States. So whenever you're born in the United States, you have a birth certificate from the state you were born in. But whenever you're born abroad, you get a United States birth certificate with with no specific state. So he was, and I got, I got, I got a passport form, a United States passport. I mean, there was no green card, no bullshit to wait for. He was just as much of a citizen as me. The only thing he can't do is run for president since he wasn't born on American soil. But other than that, everything's the same. Hey, that doesn't stop you a lot. Yeah, like, like I'd want him to do that anyway, right? But it's just so yes, I got so I got his passport. But the problem was, they wouldn't let me leave because he didn't have a stamp coming in. And I said, Well, of course he didn't, I said he was born here, how the hell is he going to have an entry stamp when he was born here? So, and my flight was leaving in two days. And I'm like, Oh, shit. So my ex called somebody and she paid off somebody at a government agency, and they were able to like get what I needed. And then whenever I went to, so we get wind up going to the, wind up going to the airport. And I leave with my son and like 24 hours later, I get home and I call her right away. And as soon as she picks up, as soon as she picks up Skype, she's like, why are you, why are you, why are you, and she's like going perplexic ape shit, right? And I'm like, what the hell? I said, I told you it takes a day to get here. And she was going crazy. I ended up finding out later that she gave me some food. She said, here, give this to your mother and she gave me some food and a bag. And I'm carrying my one year old son and I have all this luggage and shit. And I'm like, I'm not taking this fucking food all the way to America. It's going to be spoiled by the time I get back. So I chucked it in the trash. I didn't realize but the food had a bunch of drugs inside it. And she had somebody, she had a cop on the inside working at the airport that kept checking my bag as I went through security, but it wasn't there. The plan was to bust me with drugs and carry my son back out to the curb and I'd be in jail for God knows how long. That was the plan, but it didn't work because I didn't have the drugs. I threw it away. Like the second I got in there, I threw it away because I said, I'm not carrying this all the way to America. So she didn't want me to take them, but that's how I got them out. It was just pure luck, you know? And when you say your ex, is this the child's mother or is this somebody else? That's her. That's his mother. And she was okay with you taking into the USA? Well, no, she didn't want me to, but at the time she acted like she was okay because obviously I'm leaving with him, right? I mean, she's making me think, yes, you can take them there to see your mother and come back in a couple of months or something. And so that was her official story. But the truth was, I wasn't supposed to leave because they had those drugs that they put in the food. But as soon as I got in the airport, I threw them away right away before I went through security. And then when I went through security, obviously there were no drugs defined. So security had to let me go through. And it was all unbeknownst to me. I didn't know until years later that that's what happened. How did you make so much money, Ed? I've been an attorney since 2001. But I came up with a technology product where it was called Credit CRM, where I put mortgage brokers, attorneys and accountants into business of credit repair. And I had software that automated the whole process. And I was selling those like for 15 grand a pop. And from 2005 to 2008, I was selling like 20, I'd say about 23 of them a month on average. So I did very well for a few years. But then the mortgage meltdown happened in 2008. And mostly it was mortgage brokers I was selling to. And all the mortgage brokers were instantly broke. And my business just went to shit. It went down like 65% dropped from one month to the next. And so I knew the party was coming to an end, but I had some money saved. And so I ended up selling my company to my number one competitor. And, you know, for like, I didn't get that much. I got like a little over a quarter million. It's a shame I wish I would have sold it like a year prior could have got a lot more. But yes, I had a lucky run for a few years. I came up with some software that somebody didn't think of before and was able to run with it. What business did you do in Vietnam then? Nothing. I just lived off the cash that I had saved. Okay. Yeah. And did you ever go to the Kuchai tunnels? No, a few of my friends were like, oh, you should go. And I never got a run to going. I never even got a chance to go to Hanoi. I was just in I went to Moyniere, which is a beach town. We lived there actually for a few months. And there's and then from from Moyniere and then also I went down south like Kento and down by the Mekong Delta and everything. So I was down there. But for the most part, I was just in Ho Chi Minh City. Yeah, the Kuchai tunnels, that's something else for friends listening. It's a very tiny, almost like reconstituted or reconstructed part of the original tunnels that the the Viet Cong used during the during the war to stay hidden from from the Americans. Yeah. And it's pretty incredible there and down there. It's all been reconstructed so you can you see their hospitals. They had places underground where they would take the heavy bombs that fell from the bombers and didn't explode. They take them on the ground, drip water on them, and then just gently cut through them with a hacksaw with well, somebody drip water on so it didn't, you know, there wasn't an explosion. And then they would melt out that the explosives from inside and create all their IED devices. There's demonstrations of all the mantraps that they made, these spikes. You don't want to be standing on that one. To top it off, you can shoot pretty much whatever you want there. You've got the M60, the pig as it was called, this huge machine gun. Oh, they let you shoot the guns there? Yeah, it's all kind of. Oh, wow. It's not quite as wild as Cambodia. I've heard stuff that's not so nice, can we say, in Cambodia, pretty much like you can shoot anything there. But this is more, you know, just general tourist-oriented. So it's all sort of above board. What I mean is, I heard in Cambodia that they'll stake down like a pig or something, and you can shoot the pig that... Jeez. Sounds a bit insane and a bit sick, doesn't it? But there's probably loads of people in the world that would want to do that. But anyway, well, there's probably a significant enough to make it profitable is what I'm trying to say. Yeah. So, yeah. Wow. How did you get on with the food over there? Because my experience with Americans is they can't usually take their own food. Yeah, it was tough. I like pho, but there's only so much of that you could eat. But they had a Pizza Hut about a half mile away. And so I was able to get some of these American food fixes. I mean, all junk food, but it's still. And it's just... But for the most part, yeah, I wasn't really into the food that much. It was too... The meat was too bony. Because they didn't have a bunch of hormones making the chicken spats. Anytime you ate something, there was like carving any meat on it. So I wasn't real wild about that. But yeah, but the pho was good. But I got sick of it after a while. So it was just... Yeah, I just ate whenever I could, you know. So are there any ramifications of this experience? Is anything still ongoing? Are you afraid for your life or is it all in the past? Yeah, you know, just as recently as a year and a half ago, the triage tried to kill me here in Pennsylvania. I was driving... I went to a friend's house for a football game. And they always follow me. They always have some jackoff following me to the gym. And it's like, they don't come up to you. But they... There's things that I do. So I know who's following me. Like, though, if I get to the gym, somebody will show up like 18 minutes later or whatever. Like, they always show up. And I go to the gym at different times. So it's like there's... And I always try to do that to figure out who's following me. But I was driving home with my son from this game, this football game at a friend's house. And when I was coming back, there was this... The obvious road I would have taken, I took, which is a country road. Maybe one car comes by every five minutes when you're driving on it. It's not used much at all. And right before I got to a bend, and I didn't see anything, like, because I always pay attention on the road, I didn't see anything. But my tire all of a sudden blew out. And I had to do a hard jerk and overcorrect. And I barely missed it in that telephone pole by like six inches, right? And when I went to change the tire, the sidewall was punctured. So I mean, it's like something shot out from the side of the road and went like that and punctured it from the side. And I realized that they did that. Like, they knew where I was at. And there's like another thing that they do. They have supposedly... I don't know if you... Do you believe in psychics and stuff like that? Oh, don't think I've ever been asked that question. I only believe in stuff really that I can prove if that... Yep, exactly. And I was the same way until I proved it by... I found this lady that's like... She's famous over in France. She's a French psychic. And she speaks English, but she's like 300 bucks an hour. And I never believed in that stuff. But I ended up getting a whole... Like, somebody referred me to this lady and fate would have it. The second I got on the phone with her, the first thing she said to me, she said, she said, I'm with your grandmother, like my grandmother who died like 20 years ago. And she said, your grandmother said, when you were in Vietnam, it made her sad because it reminded her of the time when she lived in a different state when she was younger. And I said, my grandmother never lived in a different state. She's like, yes, she did. I said, no, she didn't. She's like, yes, she did. And then I remembered whenever my dad was born before my grandmother got pregnant, they ran off and lived in Michigan for a year. So she was right. And I was like, what? So that wasn't enough to convince me. But then she said, then right away, she said, your ex was raped by her father, her grandfather, and three of her eight uncles starting at age five. And that is exactly what my ex told me. And I never told anybody that. My ex told me crying in bed one night that when she was five years old, her father started raping her and her grandfather raped her and three of her uncles raped her. And it was just the most detail oriented thing that probably happened to nobody. And she told it to me. And it was basically my grandmother trying to get my attention to believe that it was her I was talking to. So I'm not going to get into the psychic stuff. I can go on for hours. But she told me the psychic said that the triads were told that my story is going to be a big movie one day. And they're scared that I won't be talking because they think I know a lot of information about them. And then I want me to fuck their business up. I mean, you know, so that's what she told me. And that's why they still follow me. And I have this, this, this lady. I call her CC. It's like, which is short for Cambodian cunt, because this lady is like, she looks like a witch. And this lady in my building was sent by them, right? And like the thing they want to do is they want me because they know I have a temper so they know I can fly off. They want me to start some shit so they can get me arrested. I know that's their plan. And the psychic lady confirmed it, but I don't need her to tell me that. But here's the weird part. Every time I leave the house, she's never outside, right? But every time I come home, the bitch happens to be walking out on the front steps just as I'm pulling up. And the reason they can do that is they know my phone number and your phone number, your phone, when you're driving pings off different cell phone towers, right? So they're good. They have hackers and people that work at telecom and everything, you know how connected the triads are. So they know pretty much when I'm coming home just by my phone bouncing off of the cell towers. And then this bitch always walks outside and it's, it's not just me being paranoid, like my son notices it and my girlfriend notices it. So while we all notice it, it's like clockwork. It's like, as we're pulling up, this ugly bitch is walking out of the front door. And she doesn't say anything, but she's just there. It's like, they're always, they're always trying to send me these subtle messages. And one time when I was in Vietnam, my ex let a guy into the house to kill me. And the guys acted like he was just, him and his wife were having an argument and my ex was friends with his wife and he wanted to talk to her. It was all bullshit. But he brought me these swords, these samurai swords and he gave them to me as a gift. And I'm thinking, why is this poor Vietnamese guy bringing me a fucking house gift? And this guy's like a druggy, just like some fucking loser from the depths of hell, right? I mean, he sells drugs. He killed, I mean, like she told me before that he probably killed somebody before, but I was naive. So I didn't think anything of it at the time. And the guy is in my home office and I was doing drugs. He was doing drugs. You know how it is. Like when you're doing, I should do it with anybody. It's like, it's like, it's like a camaraderie. You can't speak to anybody. So it's your way of connecting, right? So I'm sitting there doing it and the fucker gets up and this is where I, this is why I believe in God. And I think things have a certain path. God purposefully made me naive. Even though I'm not naive, I'm very clever, but I can be naive at times. But it's all part of the plan. I think everybody has a path. But the guys stand and they're holding the sword and he's breathing like really heavy, right? And I'm just like, okay, whatever. And then so then the guy ends and right before he, right before he did that, my ex came and sat on my lap and was kissing me for five minutes in front of this guy. Now, Vietnamese women don't like to show displays of affection around other people. She was saying goodbye to me, Chris. She knew I was going to be dead in another 10 minutes. But for whatever reason, this fucker froze and he couldn't do it. He ended up leaving. Then he came back the next day. This, I still didn't figure it out. Then he came back the next day with three friends, right? And he said, oh, do you want to go to, he didn't speak English. But my ex is like, oh, they want to know if you want to go to the casinos in Cambodia. And I'm like, nah, I don't want to go. So I ended up finding out later the plan was to kill me on the way to Cambodia and dump my body somewhere. But so the guy, he's arguing with his friends and the two friends are like shaking their head and they're arguing together. And my ex did the same thing. She came down and hugged me for a few minutes in front of these guys and then left because she thought I was going to die again. But so the two guys ended up getting up and leaving. And then I figured it out. After, then the other two guys left. And then I figured out what was going on and I accused myself, what the fuck is going on? And then my ex, my ex ended up admitting that she thought he was up to something, but she wasn't sure what, which was complete bullshit. But it's like, yeah, so that's one of the, and the guy, I don't think I can be killed. Let's put it that way. I don't mean that in an arrogant way, but I've seen things happen. Like that guy, this guy was a killer, right? He would have had no qualms about dropping my head off, but he couldn't do it. And I think that whenever, I think the triads, they can't come up and shoot me because I really believe, like, I believe Donald Trump is protected like that. If Donald Trump wasn't protected, he would have been killed a million times with all the shit he was like shaking up across the globe, like telling the EU they got to pay their fair share, telling China, we're putting tariffs on you. There was just way too much stuff going on when JFK was killed for a lot less. So I think sometimes people have a protection going through life. And I think I have that protection. So I think the only way they can kill me is if they do it like from a, from afar, like they had that, that device on the road or they have this, they have that, or they want to try to poison me. Like I'll get like advertisements. Like when I was in Florida, I would always get a Chinese takeout menu on my door. And I'd look around and every other neighbor, nobody had it with me, right? And the upstairs apartment, nobody lived there. And it wasn't there either. So I know that they didn't just come out and grab it before me. It was only put there for me because they wanted me to order from it. So they can bring me some poison food. And I mean, there's just a lot of games they play and a lot of bullshit. But that's why I wrote, like I have that website up the devil prefers.com. And I guess she said you're going to put it underneath. But I'm trying to shot like, so I guess if they did go to psychics, I guess the psychics are right because I do want to get this made into a movie or something. Because I think that I think it can save a lot of people because if you go, if you go to Macau as a Westerner, they they're trying to scam you that don't just want your money for the girls. They want to get everything you have. They're hacking your computers. They're looking into it. And if you have money, they're going to target you. And people don't understand how these dirtbags are behind the scenes doing stuff. And there's just a lot of shit that they do in Macau. And these triads are some greedy motherfuckers, man. They're I mean, they're just I really have no respect for them. I think there's some of the earth. Again, for friends at home, so these triads recruit, they recruit people that are down on their luck or people that don't have a lot going for them in their life. They'll recruit from in the UK, we say sink estates, but in in Hong Kong, for example, you've got these huge blocks of flats. And they're all anonymous. They're all gray. They're all incredibly ugly. It's just the like the rabbit hutches for the workforce. And some of the poverty and deprivation that goes on is very cramped living quarters. And I think you get a lot of you get a lot of these predominant young young men, obviously, the triads are all male who are dispossessed, probably lacking emotions of sociopathic. And they just make prime pickings for the triad that can make them be a man, make them feel a bit hard, make them feel part of the brotherhood. And yes, when if you're psychopathic, sociopathic, you lack empathy for other people. So you will, you know, you will do nasty things. Ed, do you drive a Lexus? Do I drive a Lexus? Yeah. No, infinity. Okay. Yeah, the clairvoyant thing, my jury is still out on that. You were close. But let's just finish off because I just want to talk just to stay on this theme. What we're going to do is we'll finish, we're going to put some warning things out there for people traveling because there's a few things traveling, you've just got to if you avoid them, you'll be pretty much fine. But before we discuss that, why is it that that drug, meth, why is it you can experience such utterly inexplainable, bizarre circumstances? What, what, what the hell? I mean, my book is like a series of them. You know, you know what it is. And I'm going to get spiritual on you for a second. Did you ever hear of a guy named Alan Watts? Yeah, massively. Yeah, Alan Watts is. He died in 1973, but he has thousands of hours on YouTube. And I listen to him, but and there's, but as far as like, like, you know, they call like wines and spirits when you drink booze, they call it spirits, right? Yeah. So booze are really, they're, they're negative spirits and nothing is more negative than drugs. So whenever you smoke these, smoke, whenever you do drugs and you drink a lot, you invite all this negative energy and all these negative forces into your life. And, and that's how it comes. And it's like, that's, so there's, you know, so one of the things I did is I mean, and I, when I was in Florida, I'd go supposedly salt water is good to get rid of like negative spirits, evil spirits and things like that. Supposedly the negative energies hate salt water. So that's a good thing. Like, like go into the ocean and open your eyeballs, let the salt water hit at night. It'll help you out, you know, but it's like, but I think that's part of it. Now for me, the reason I liked ice so much after I started number one, it felt good, obviously, but number two, God, the time fly. I mean, like literally like a week would go by on ice and it would seem like if you weren't on ice, it would be like eight hours of a regular day. You know what I mean? And I hated it so much over in Vietnam. I was so bored out of my mind, couldn't talk to anybody. Every, I didn't know what I was going to do. I sold my company, couldn't think of the next big thing to do. So I was like really hating life. And I just wanted it to go faster. I'm like, okay, whatever slump I'm going through, maybe if I, if I'm doing ice, at least the end will seem like it came faster, you know, like sort of being in a self-induced coma of sorts. But that's what I got advice. I didn't really get much psychosis that I remember. At least I think I didn't. Well, did you get any? Do you recognize that? Only one time, you know, one time I was reading something. I, because I used to use translate a lot, right? So I found something on my ex's computer and I thought she wrote it. And, and Google translate, translates, translates Vietnamese like, like shit, right? And I thought it was her diary, but it was really like some book or some bullshit. And, and it said how she's like talking to her brother to come, to come kill me. And that's the only time that I'm like, okay, what the fuck, you know? And it's like, and, but that was, I don't think it was ice. That's when they put other shit. Because the ice, it was a different color. Everything was weird. I think they might have had angel dust and some other shit in there. There's, and I think that's what caused it, but that was the only time where I said, wait, wait, what's going on with my mind? You know, because I'm there's, I didn't jump. I didn't, when I was 15 years old, I drank a fifth of peppermint schnapps. And I got so deathly ill that I didn't, it just turned me off to alcohol for the longest time. I didn't drink again until I was 28. I didn't smoke marijuana until I was 28. The only thing I did was smoke cigarettes from 18 years old to 28. And I quit like four times for like five months at a time because I was born and then, and I haven't smoked, I haven't smoked since it's like, there's, I hate cigarettes. I can't stand the smell of them. But so I had a really strong foundation. Like I didn't have this drug-battered body. Like I got through my, I got well into my adult years before I started fucking it up. You know what I mean? And it's like, so I think that's why I was pretty lucky with stuff because I didn't, I didn't mess with my brain. Like when it was still developing, like they say alcoholism, they say, if you drink alcohol even before you're 25, it could like really mess up your, your brain development. So I didn't really drink it until I was 28, except for the one time that got me sick when I was 15 years old. You know? Oh, sorry, I thought you were coming on to- Oh, no, no, that's all I'm just answering. Like you said, what gets people in the ice? And I guess I went on a little bit of a, I digressed a little bit, but- I just, it's just that weird thing. And for anybody listening, like we're not promoting this stuff in any way, shape or form. I've just lived a life. I lived my life. I've done some good things. I've done some things that seemed quite challenging at the time, but I'm, I'm happy about it. You know, it didn't, it didn't, well, we'll say happy, but you know, I'm not going to complain, but I don't want anyone watching this to think that we're in any way minimalizing the risk of this stuff. If you mess with it, any of that stuff, you've got to be prepared to die. It's just that simple, right? You've got to be prepared to die. And many people do, many of my best friends have done, ironically, alcohol, being the one that ultimately seems to get everyone that mucks around in that, you know, in that lifestyle for long enough. But yes, but what I did want to explore without glamorizing, and this isn't glamorous, it's awful. A lot of people say that, you know, when you take a substance, you're opening yourself up to demons. And in a way, it works both metaphorically and actually kind of really whether or not it's, I mean, a scientist would probably tell you, no, you're overlay loading the synapses in your brain with too much of this chemical, and it starts misfiring. And this is why you, but that doesn't get over the fact that it still opens you up for pretty evil, you know, for an evil influence. Yeah, just even like sexual deviancy, like when you're on ice and stuff like that, there's just, you know, there's things I used to do and I think back, oh my God, I'd never do that in a million years. Like I wouldn't even go to a sauna now, you know what I mean? You know, so there's, I mean, a lot of it's because of my son and I'm a little bit older, but still, I do realize that the guy, your inhibitions just go way down and like your, whenever you're on it, it's just, yeah, I don't think anybody should do it, but I'm not going to lie, it's having that fun, you know. Yeah, sure. I mean, it's just so many untighter ends for my experience when I was doing all that stuff back along, just things would happen and they'd be so bizarre. They'd just be so bizarre. And no, I mean, I got followed by the tribe many, well, several times. Why? I mean, okay, I worked for them. I guess they were scoping me out to see, to check I wasn't undercover police because the British were still in charge of Hong Kong when I lived there. So the undercover coppers, a lot of them were, you know, young guns like I was, right? Yeah. Westerners, I should say, or Brits. But I get followed home. The scams, you just got to be on your toes and I feel for people, so many Westerners must get scammed when you start mucking around with the girls. Yeah. I mean, I saw, it's in my book, one of my friends who I'd worked with in a company there. He's coming out of my nightclub one morning and he's with this very beautiful lady boy. And I'm sort of from, I don't know, is he gay and he knows that this is a guy or does he not know? And this just does a pretty minimal sort of thing. There were other nights where one of the bar girls would come up to me or one of the bar girls came up to me and said, she said, okay, Chris, tonight, you take me home, fuck me. And I'm like, yeah, yeah, whatever. Because here's the thing. No, no, that's all she said. She said, Paul, Paul say, take me home tonight. Paul was the triad big brother, so the dylo, the gang leader of the, who ran the club I worked in. And well, I just couldn't take, I couldn't pay her any heed because you never know what trick they're playing next on you. You just don't know what are they trying to find out. They had a real thing about gay people in Hong Kong. It can be quite an animalistic, as we've been hearing, quite an animalistic culture when you're in those the red light areas and in this kind of arena, life is cheap and quite nasty. And you've got a bunch of young psychopaths, psychopathic thugs all working for one of the world's top criminal gangs. Yeah, they didn't marry much like gay people. They really didn't like black people. Yeah. Hated Indians, yando yan. And so you just never quite knew what was going on. Whether a girl coming up and offering me, you know, this, this favor, because the boss has told her to whether they're trying to find out if you're gay or not. Or what it was, it was just, Ed, is this making sense? It was just bizarre. With things that happened, I just couldn't, I had no idea. I can guess what it might have been about. Well, you've been, okay, I know that I know a little bit about you that you were homeless over there, right? Yes. Okay. So I'm assuming that you didn't have a lot of money when you were working at the club. I'm assuming that it's not like you went over there with a shitload of cash. Is that safe to say? Yeah, I ended up selling my Rolex and that was my last wad of cash. Yes. So they weren't targeting you for the big scam. So yours, I don't know, they might have just been like trying to get some eyes on you to see if you were talking to somebody or something else was going on. Like a lot of the things, like another thing that happened here, when I first got back, they had my computer hacked and I didn't know. And they had some Chinese girl contact me. I was on match.com. And the Chinese girl contacts me, I go meet her an hour away in Pittsburgh. And after I meet her, I'm like, okay, I'll see you later. And she's like, and like, looking at me and I'm thinking, whoa, this is too easy. Like she's like, like asking me not to end the night, right? So I said, do you want to come back to my house? And she's like, yeah. And I'm like, okay. So drove her an hour back to my house, which was an hour further away from her because she lived two hours away and we met in the middle. And the next morning, I get up to take my dogs for a walk. And I come back and this bitch is in the backyard taking pictures in my house. Like taking pictures. This is typical of what what I'm trying to explain these just weird stuff happens and there's no X. Yeah. You know what I think it is? They're not like I think Chinese criminals, like these triads, yeah, I guess maybe the tattooed punks got something to prove. But I think for the most part, then I'll have I don't think they're, they're not nearly as ruthless as like these, these Mexican gangs and like, like I'll sell the door and all this other shit. I think they got to get warmed up to attack you. Like they're not just going to do it right away. They got to study you for a while. It's almost like, like I said, the hyena is coming in on the lion. They're not going to come right in. The lion has to show fear, has to move backwards. Something has to happen before they'll attack you. I think they're, I just think that's their posture. I don't know. Yeah. Well, a kind of difference is, is the, the triads are based on the ancient rebels that fought against the oppressive dynasties and they had their codes of honor and they operated very much along the lines of say freemasonry. So initiation rights, secret language, secret handshakes, all this sort of stuff. So it was actually a quite an honorable thing in days gone by. It's only in recent times where it's all been kind of skewed by crime and money and greed and this kind of thing. But yeah, it's just, folks, if you want to learn more, I've written a book about it. I want to tell you, I love your title, by the way. That's a great title. Yeah. Well, in Hong Kong, it's sik yin. The book was going to be called sik yin. In fact, I was going to call it sik yin, eating smoke. So sik yin means to eat, to eat smoke. Yeah. It's the Chinese expression for smoking. So to take in smoke, i.e. you're eating smoke. Yeah. And yeah, I think my publisher decided that was too complicated, having sort of two names. But oh, it's so bizarre listening to your story because those elements of surrealism are just, I get it. I really get it. And I guess there'd be people that would just easily write, oh, wow, it was all just, it was the lifestyle you live in. You're not in the right frame of etc. And yeah, I mean, I wouldn't disagree about that. But that doesn't take away from the fact that things happened. Concrete things happened. And yeah, just as things that had no explanation, just bizarre. I mean, yeah. It's definitely an experience, but I mean, there's, I wouldn't take it back for the world, to be honest, but I mean, because I got my son out of it. And I think, I think you have to have challenges in life. If you don't, I don't think you evolve. I like, I believe in reincarnation and stuff like that. Do you, do you think though, I mean, I seem, I mean, guys come and mail me guys that spent a lot of time in Southeast Asia. And there's a definite pattern. It's, it's really a head in his paradise. And if you've come from a broken background, it can seem that, wow, you're, you're, I don't know, you're quite important for the first time in your life. There's, you know, there's these beautiful girls, and they're all around you and etc. etc. And they're all smiling. Yeah. And then of course, you've got the, you know, the substance angle and then the nightclub's angle. And I would just say to anyone that, that that's listening, you know, we're, you don't need to go to Asia to find love. It's, it's all around, you know, there's, it's all around you. It's just waiting. When you're ready, when you're ready in yourself and you've got control over your mind, over your ego, then the right person comes along. It's, that's the only way I can sort of explain it. But to be over there in Asia, you're playing a dangerous game. If you're, if you don't know who you are, you can get caught with a little bit of something. And that is a long time in a cockroach infested slammer or getting blackmail to enter your bank account, etc. etc. My advice to anyone is don't get involved in that stuff abroad. Is it advice I've ever taken? Well, no, but that doesn't mean I can't give it out, you know, don't go on the beach at night. That's another one, a haven, a lot of impoverished communities. The beach at night becomes kind of a hot pot for criminality and spotting a Western with a flashy watch or, you know, a wallet shove full of credit cards or whatever in his pocket, then people will have eyes on you and these people possibly don't have the morals that you do. So that's my, that's Uncle Chris's 10 cents worth. Yeah, be very careful with the, like when you're at a club buying drinks, make sure you watch your drink get poured and hold on to your drink the whole time. Yeah, watch your drinks because you get slipped to Mickey and you wake up in some B&B, your wallet's gone and you vaguely remember you were buying a girl a drink the night before, that's a big one. Yeah. If a girl comes up and sits down, it could be a Westerner, a lot of Westerners get employed to do this. Oh, hi honey, you want to come in? And of course, I always worked in the club. So I knew it. So I'll be like, now I'm all right, my love, thanks. I'm going home to sleep. Oh, you work here? Yeah. Right. And, but what they do, they get you in and they say, Hey, look, why don't we treat ourselves to a bottle of champagne? Come on. And she's, she's doing all this. And this, this actually happened to me in Turkey as well. Next thing you know, you've got this bar bill put in front of you and it's extortionate. And you haven't got the money to pay that. And of course, then you realise that this, this girl's in on it, all this young female is in on it and you've been scammed big time. Channelman Square, I got scammed. Two girls came up, they said they were students, they, they were youngest, they said they wanted to practice their English and they were fine and most harmless to individuals you think you could ever meet. They said, Do you want a cup of tea? Yeah, why not? So we went to a tea house and we're drinking tea and when the bill came, I looked at it, it's like, this is China, right? This bill was ridiculous. It was a lot, it was a lot of money. I mean, and then I realised then, ah, so I went to the lonely planet and I read the, the, the dangers and annoyances and it says if people come up and say they want to practice their English, don't believe it. They're just trying to get you to a tea house where you're going to get given. We've all, we've all done it. Generally speaking, though, you can kind of get out of it. You might lose a few quid, but with the substance thing, you just, that's just a recipe for disaster abroad and I include alcohol in that one or excessive alcohol. The number of people that have dived into swimming pools and it's been the shallow end, or the pool's been empty and they're paralyzed for life. It's some, yes. So, Ed, listen, I wish you and your, your little man all the best for the future. I hope you can just disentangle yourself with all of that malarkey 100% and move forward in your life. Yeah, it'd be nice, but it's just, there's, at this point, I just, I realised that I have to, I have to finish, I have to finish writing this book and it has to be a story made because there's just too many things happened. I mean, my ex tried to kill herself one time. She took a bunch of pills. I made it to the hospital 20 minutes before she died. Little did I know she was one week pregnant with my son at the time. I mean, there's, I have, I can go on, I have like, I have like 30 of these stories and these things that really did happen and I just, I just want to get the story out there and you know what, I just don't like the triads. I just, I can't stand these fuckers and it's like, I want to throw it right back in their face, you know, it's like, they're going to cause me all these problems and still follow me and do bullshit to me to this day. Okay, let's just see, let's see where the chips land, you know. Yes, just be careful what you wish for. Yeah, definitely bud. Hey, thanks for having me on. I really appreciate it. Absolutely. What car did you say you drive? In infinity. Okay, so our friends at home, massive loves to you all. If you can, I hope you found this as fascinating as I have. If you can like and subscribe, we'll see you next time. Ed, I'm hearing infinity. Is that right? You see, you're a natural.