This morning was actually Super Bowl Sunday in the United States, but here it was Monday. First time I would ever see the Super Bowl live on a Monday. I awoke at 6am and packed up. I knew the Super Bowl was early, but not sure of the exact time. I sent a text message home to ask a friend when the Super Bowl was going to start and I got a response that kick-off would be in forty minutes. I packed the rest of my belongings and then walked out to find another room. I booked another room at a hotel this time, but could not move until a littler later in the day. I walked down Kho San and searched for a bar with the game on. The first bar that I came to was the same bar where I met Ivan from Columbia. I looked inside and saw a TV showing a football stadium. A few other early birds were gathered around the screen. I found myself a seat close to the action and waited.
I ordered an omelet and coffee as it was only 7am. Very different than a beer and chicken wings I would order at a bar in Chicago if I was watching the game at 5pm. I made the remark to some people next to me that it was the first time I have ever drank coffee and a Super Bowl viewing, and we did a toast with our coffee cups. There was this one dude across the bar drinking a singha and asked if anyone wanted a beer on him. At first no one said anything, but then a guy right behind me said “sure I will have one if you are buying.” I then got up and said, “I will have one too and then offered to buy him his next round.” The person who offered the beers pumped his fist in celebration that two people accepted his offer and soon we had three cold Singhas in front of us. This was around the second quarter and I looked at my beer and my coffee next to it, and I said enough of this coffee let’s have a beer. The man who offered the beer to me, the other guy that accepted, and I raised our beers in unison and we said a mutual toast and had our first of many drinks.
Most of the people around me were Eagle fans, so I joined the Eagle bandwagon. Soon the people around me all said let’s go to the table in back as there is a big screen. I headed back there with about 8 or 9 other people. The guy who bought me a beer joined us too. His name was Kip from Alaska and he was quite a character. It soon became apparent that he was on an all night drunk as he was still partying from the night before or he was just naturally insane. I think he was on something more than alcohol because he kept talking at a frenetic pace changing from one story to the next and making absolute no sense. He would be talking about his job as a backwoods park ranger at one point and then talk about circumcising a polar bear the next without any interlude in the story to explain the shift. He was always spewing inconsequential facts out too. At one point he said “do you want to hear a fact about navigable rivers?” I said Kip, there is nothing more than I want to hear right now than a fact about navigable rivers. He then replied that he was just a stoner. Why he decided to say this at this point, I have no idea.
The first person to accept Kip’s invitation to drink was a fellow by the name of Mark. I started talking to him and his girlfriend Helen and they were really cool. They were right there with me egging on Kip’s weird stories. They were teaching in China and were on Chinese New Year break. They were from Seattle. Mark had a couple of sisters with him and a posse of other people. It was a great time. There was also this dude from Philadelphia who kept running circles around the circle of drinkers around the TV every time the Eagles did something good. I did not catch his name as he had a 1:30pm flight, so he left right after the game. There were many cheers and toasts made to Super Bowl Monday. Another funny thing was we were watching the game on ESPN worldwide and they did not have the chic commercials we were all used to while watching the Super Bowl. Instead they kept showing these highlights from past classic Wimbledon matches. We began a mock cheer to these commercials because they were so boring and so far from what we were used to while watching this iconic media event.
I ended up drinking with this crew until 2pm, so we were in the bar for eight hours. A pretty long time, but a far cry from the sixteen hours I spent at Joe’s bar in Chicago during and after a Tennessee/Florida football game. So far on my trip I have not met many Americans, and I did not meet that many throughout the trip compared to the many Canadians, British, and Aussies, so it was nice to spend some time with some really cool Americans watching something totally American like the Super Bowl. I made plans to meet this group later on for the evening and I stumbled back to my new hotel room. As far as I know, my room does not have any roommates. It also has air-conditioning, a towel, and a sheet on the bed. The room had all these amenities for 10$. Sometimes you just have to splurge.
