The Devil Prefers Livestock

I arrived in Vietnam with my dogs with plans on staying for good on 2/25/2010. I remember lying in bed the first night thinking, WTF did I do? I snapped out of it the next day thankfully and tried to make the best of it. The first month was uneventful until I found out that Hong lied to me about being in Singapore just before I got there.

In late March 2010, Hong said she wanted to visit her mother after I was there for a month and said it was better if I stayed home since the power always was out down there in the jungle where her family was from.  I had a weird feeling because Hong had her sister and her cousin's passport in our dresser but not hers, so I started snooping and looked at her computer while she was gone and saw that the I.P. Address, she sent an email from just a week before I came to Vietnam for good was an I.P. address in Singapore.  I said WTF? She never told me that she went to Singapore; what was she hiding?  I called her while she was at her mother's and asked her where her passport was so I could see if she was in Singapore.  She kept saying that she didn't go to Singapore and wanted me to wait until she returned to show me where the passport was.  I was pissed; why did she lie about going to Singapore?  Before she returned, I was able to run a low-level analysis on her hard drive that pulled up deleted cookies that showed she had a Facebook account which I also didn't know.  I was able to find the username and reverse engineered a way into the account by guessing what the password was from other passwords she used and saw that she was talking to some guy in Singapore that was proclaiming his love for her.   I acted like her and chatted with the guy to find out what they had done or how serious it was. I was able to gather that she only kissed the guy (Long story as to how I did it, but I know how to manipulate, and this guy seemed like he was a virgin, so I assumed it wasn't anything other than her having a Plan B in the event I decided not to move there).   I was beside myself though, because she lied. Who knows what else she was up to while there, so I told her that it was over.  She returned in tears and finally showed me the passport, and I saw that she was in Singapore for three weeks just before I moved to Vietnam.  I told her that I wished I had picked the other girl Phuong, and that she was "no good," etc.  I went to get a foot massage and came back to find her lying in bed when she told me that she took 24 sleeping pills.  WTF...  I quickly took her to a medical place that only spoke Vietnamese, and Hong said to me that they said she would be OK as long as she went to a hospital within 24 hours.  They said they couldn't help her there because they were just a small clinic.  I was up for two days and tired and returned home wanting to go to sleep, but it didn't make sense to me why a pill overdose is OK for 24 hours, so I angrily told Hong to get on the motorcycle so we could go to the hospital 10 miles away.  It was 2 AM now, and I drove like a madman and screamed at Hong the whole time for taking those pills.

The fact that I drove like a madman kept her awake and saved her life. We walked into the hospital, and it looked like a warzone.  People were lying everywhere on the floor because all of the beds and stretchers were full. Every other person was in a motorcycle accident since 99% of all vehicles in Vietnam are motorcycles, and many were riding while drunk since it was so late.  Guys were lying on the blood-soaked floor with their intestines in their hands; another guy had his eyeball hanging from his head. All you could hear was anguish and moaning. I quickly got the attention of the intake nurse that spoke some English, and he asked why I was there.  I showed him the empty box of pills she took, and his eyes about popped out as he quickly went to get a doctor to come and take Hong's pulse.  As the Doctor took her pulse, I could see he was scared, and even though there was a bloody mess of people waiting, he took her immediately and put her on a gurney, and wheeled her outside on the sidewalk since there was no room in the hospital.  They began to pump her stomach within 5 minutes of me walking in the door.  The Doctor told me that she would have been dead in 20 minutes had I not come.  Little did I know, she was also one week pregnant with our son.  I saved two lives that night.  I now know from being told by Hong's friend that Hong took the pills out of fear that the triads would sell her off as a lifelong slave since she messed up the scam against me by going to Singapore.

The picture below was the picture I took at the hospital. The hallway she is in has an open wall to the right that is an outside courtyard. They left her in that hallway for three hours until they got a room for her, where she was admitted until the next day when I took her home.

The route I drove from point A to Point B from my house to the hospital that night is pictured below. I lived at the spot the arrow points to on the top of the map and the arrow on the bottom points to the hospital we were at. I didn't know how to get there; if Hong had passed out, we would have been screwed, and she and my unborn son would have died for sure because I had no clue where to take her.

Hong and I reconciled while she was still in the hospital, and I tried to move on from the whole thing, but no matter how hard I tried, I always had it in the back of my mind that she was dishonest, and I always felt like there was something else that I didn't know.  I was right in more ways than I had ever wanted to know, but time would deliver the details bit by bit; it wasn't going to come overnight.  So basically, I was bored in Vietnam and occasionally went to Macau to hang out with Hong's friends.  We ended up finding out that Hong was pregnant a month after the pill overdose, and Hong told me that she would be shamed if she had a baby out of wedlock and pushed me to marry her "in a shotgun wedding of sorts you could say" in only two months in Vietnam.  I knew that the United States wouldn't recognize the marriage, so I said yes since it was supposedly important not to shame her family by having a baby out of wedlock.  

There were close to 450 people at the wedding throughout the day, and I had only my knucklehead friend Yanni that I flew in 3 days prior, LOL...  I practiced a Vietnamese Toast for over a month and thought it was strange that Hong quickly left right before I said it.  I now know it was because she felt terrible and didn't want to stand there as everybody secretly laughed inside since they all knew it was a scam.  Only my friend Yanni and I thought it was legitimate, but they do it all of the time in Hong's family; I was just another sucker very close to getting hung out to dry.  The wedding was beyond Crazy, it was in the jungle at Hong's Parent's house, and Hong hired 7 Ladyboys to perform.  They were taking off their tops with 4-year-old kids looking on.  It was a night to remember for sure.  

The fact that they go All-Out on the wedding is part of the scam. By making sure it is professionally videotaped and comes across as genuine, it is done to erase any doubt that the marriage wasn't legitimate so they can keep your money once you get arrested or killed.   They have this scam down to a science.  Hong even told me that there are a few Americans in the remote jail by her father's house.  No Americans live within 100 miles of there, and it's not like America where they transfer prisoners far away to do their time. They are there as a result of being set up by girls like Hong.  They steal more than the money you have though; Hong told me that their families send money from America to get better food and living quarters.  Hong's family gets residual income off the scam. I am pretty sure that the guys in there probably don't even realize that the one they loved was the one that set them up because they do everything behind the scenes with exacting detail and always make sure that they can point the finger at one or two other directions when the time comes.

Below on the right is a map that shows where Hong's family lived in Vi Thanh, Vietnam.  The "1" arrow was her father and Uncle's houses and where we had the wedding. The "2" arrow is the prison where Hong said Americans are and the prison where the Warden is also good friends with Hong's Father, who once scolded Hong for not framing me sooner, which I found out six months later.  The other two yellow blocks are where her other Aunts and Uncles live.

"7" was the leader and Boss to all the girls; as I stated previously, she ended up marrying a Chinese Triad named John (his AKA) that lived part-time in Hawaii and liked computers like me, so we hit it off pretty good.  John would do things like ride with me in the Taxi back to the Airport when I went back to Vietnam, insist on paying for the Taxi, and even walk me inside to make sure I got checked in OK.  They have a way of making you feel special.  I also think it was done to assure they knew where I was and who I always talked to in order to ensure their scam would never be discovered. The fact that he was a Triad was quickly forgotten and overlooked since I genuinely felt like they cared about me like family.  I'm not entirely naive; I knew that they liked me for my money and what I could do for them, but that was OK with me because I didn't feel like it was the most important reason.  They know how to make you feel loved, especially when you can't speak to 99.9% of the people you meet, and all your friends and family are 8000 miles away. They know that you are lonely and feeling out of place. That dynamic makes you a prime target for their scam technique.  Below is a picture of John and "7" at their wedding

I was never a big drug guy and didn't even drink alcohol until I was 28 due to getting gravely sick from drinking half a bottle of Peppermint Schnapps when I was 15, which turned me off on alcohol for 13 years until I started drinking red wine when I was 28.  All of Hong's friends smoked what I was told was Designer Ephedra even though it was "ice."  They would always come up to me and put it in my face and offer it to me constantly with their cute little smiles to go with it.  Hong told me that they do that when they like you and want you to feel special (whatever!). But keep in mind that I wanted to fit in since I was a fish out of the water over there, so it was hard to resist after a while, and I eventually relented.  I wanted to connect on any level since the language barrier and culture clash isolated me in a way I never knew could exist.  Once the drug hits, you feel a bond with the people you are doing it with, and they would give me massage after massage, and several of her friends came on to me one after the other.  Remember, Hong said I could have fun and fun I did have.  Ignorance was bliss as they molded me into their evil web, with me being none the wiser the entire time.  I would buy all of her friends' gifts, help them with their iPods, go to Discos with 8 of them and only me; I felt like a Rock Star, and I thought life was amazing, but looking back, I can see that they were gathering information and executing their scam the entire time.  

Hollywood's Portrayal of the criminal underworld in Asia is inaccurate. The criminals in Asia all approach you with a smile.  It's not like the movies where there is a cocky Asian Guy with tattoos acting tough.  They dress nice and come off as legitimate businessmen and run legitimate businesses too. Still, the crimes they plot and commit behind the scenes are eviler than anything you see in the movies.  They try to not only steal everything you have; they try to take your heart and soul too.  They are evil, hateful cretins; it's no wonder women are so abused in Asia when a specific class of guys exercises pure evil so easily and with no remorse whatsoever. The good Asian men are not much help either since Asian culture is so tight-lipped that nobody will say anything or rat anybody out even if they disagree with what they are doing. How can you expect women to be treated well when many of the guys are so entitled and evil to the core and are not being challenged or exposed by the good Asian Men over there?  I am referencing the criminals over in Asia, not Asian men as a whole, but let me say that there is no shortage of criminals over there, and the criminal's constant practicing of the art of deception makes it hard, if not impossible, to tell who is who. You need to expect the unexpected but can even the playing field if you stand up to them with zero fear.  They can't easily overcome that; they need you to cower with your tail between your legs before pouncing, or they won't have the courage to attack you.  I had 5 to 6 guys sitting outside my house at a coffee shop 8 hours a day, six days a week for almost two months from May 2011 to July 2011, using smartphones to control my computers that my ex helped them infect. Still, I always stared them down every time I left my house, and they would always shy away because deep down, they are cowards.  If given a chance, they will slice your throat and not lose a blink of sleep over it, so you need to be prepared for anything over there. It's not like America, where you can tell if a person hates you; their deception skills are unlike anything you'll come across in America. I was, of course, dealing with the worst of the worst when I was in Asia. I have tons of respect for all Asian cultures and people. I will be the first to say that Asians commit the least crime of any demographic in America, but that shouldn't cause you to put down your guard over there because, like all countries, Asia has plenty of dogshit also.

As previously mentioned, I was warned by several Americans that either lived in Asia for many years or go there regularly that I was being scammed.  They told me that the girls who work at the Saunas are trained to get Western Men to love them and convince them to move over there for them.  Relocating there is not required for them to scam you though, most of their scams are blackmail executed on men that only visited there but got their computer hacked while there upon which the Triads studied the victim for a way to extract money from him.  Regarding the ones that do move there, they told me that they try to get you hooked on drugs in hopes you'll become detached from your family. At the same time, they spy on you and try to isolate your assets until they feel like the time is right, and then you disappear. Your family just assumes you went off the deep end since you already weren't calling that often because you were in a drug-induced depression and just a lost soul that forgot everybody and went to God knows where. I was very close to having that fate, but God smiled on me, and my son came along to sway things in my direction too.

December 2^nd, 2010 - My Son is Born

Given that Hong got pregnant around the time I arrived in Vietnam on February 24th, 2010, Hong didn't know if I was the father or if it was her Vietnamese ex Cuong Nguyen. She wouldn't let me be in the delivery room and even had her cousin take me to get Baby Formula the second my son was born at 11:43 PM before letting me see him. She wanted to make sure I was the father. If my son had looked 100% Asian after they cleaned him off, the plan was to attempt to kill me before I returned to the hospital. Hong's cousin had me driving in circles for a half-hour, acting as though she didn't know where the place was to buy formula when she received a call from Hong during that time, and within 30 seconds, she knew which way to go. Hong didn't even open the formula; she breastfed our son from day 1. I didn't figure this plot out but was told by a friend of Hong long after moving back to the United States with my son. She said to me that Hong had people lying in wait for the order to kill me and that Hong's cousin was going to lead me there and act as though it was the direction we needed to go for the formula, but after Hong called and said the baby was mine, they called it off.

Hong later slipped and told me that Cuong Nguyen went back to America two days after my son was born, which I now know he did because he was hoping the baby was his and angrily left Vietnam once he realized the baby wasn't his. Cuong Nguyen came back to Vietnam five months later, on April 15th, 2011, only one day after the Airplane scam. He was in the air the same time as I was. Cuong planned to be with Hong since I would now be in jail forever, but as you'll learn, they counted their chickens before they hatched, and I escaped that plot. Hong and Cuong started to reconcile sometime in February 2011 and secretly chatted while he was in America as the plot to take me out unfolded. If my son weren't mine, I would have been killed if I couldn't escape the thugs lying in wait for me to arrive. My Son and I took turns saving each other's life as you'll discover later in the story.  I have spoken to two Korean guys who frequently traveled to Vietnam for business since my return to the United States. They both were very knowledgeable about how these scams play out in Vietnam, and both were shocked and kept saying they couldn't believe I escaped once they latched on because nobody escapes once they target you, according to them. They noted that scamming Americans is very common, but any ethnic race gets targeted if the opportunity arises. The Triads help lure wealthy targets to Vietnam, like in my case, by using the women as bait. These scams are a big business for these dirtbags.

When I first moved to Vietnam, Hong did love me even though the initial plan was to scam me. She would tell me how she distanced herself from her previous friends because they were all bad people that only wanted her money. Hong even said that Giang was evil and that I never met him because she was worried he would scam me. Since she already said that, when her loyalty shifted away from me, she needed to have a good excuse as to why she invited Giang to come, so calling him to defend her brother against a gang of alleged attackers was the best way to do it. Giang showed up with three friends within 5 minutes of her calling him at 1 AM on New Year's Eve! This guy was a drug addict also, which makes me know for sure that it was a staged fight with her brother because there is no way you can get four guys to drop everything they are doing (drugs too) to be somewhere in 5 minutes at 1 AM for a girl they haven't seen in over a year. It takes that long to piss first, let alone get somewhere. Giang lived more than 5 minutes from our house by the way, so this was obviously a game they were playing.

I just brought the $1.5 Million of Chinese Yuan into Vietnam 2 weeks prior also. Add that to the $100,000 of Yuan I already had plus around $50,000 US, the temptation was too much to resist, and they decided it was time to move against me.

I went with Hong and those guys back to the nightclub, but the supposed attackers were obviously not there. In the future, Giang wimped out on killing me two times after that night, so there is a chance that he was supposed to kill me that night with his friends also, but since it was the first time he met me, maybe they were scared because of my size. I'm 6'3" 225 pounds; that's a Giant in Vietnam. The other possibility is that this night was supposed to only be an initial meeting where they could size me up and make me feel indebted to them for running to my wife's request for help, which would make it easier for them to get me to invite them in my home in the future. Whatever the two possibilities, it was the first time Hong made a big move towards betraying me to steal my money eventually.

The picture above is significant because it shows you how masterful they are at deception. Hong looks 100% normal and loving in this picture even though she was trying to get me killed in an hour or, at a minimum, betray me to jump the scam into high gear. How can she look so sweet, calm, and normal when she was 1 hour away from doing something horrible to me? Like I said. These people wrote the book on complete deception. This poker face makes them very dangerous. I've searched her eyes in numerous pictures and couldn't detect deception ever.