Yarrrr! Pirates!

Keaw told us about a pirate party in Malmo that involved going to a ship museum, having a party on a ship, dinner, sleeping on the ship, breakfast, and then a scavenger hunt in the morning. It was only 150 SEK which is about $20. The only problem was, Stefano and I didn't have any pirate things and didn't want to rent a costume so we did what we do best - cheap creativity.

On Saturdays there is the American equivalent of a Flea Market where you can buy used things at yard sale prices. Unfortunately it usually only stays open in the morning and we headed for it at noon. But we dashed from one vendor to another perusing the clothing (which was mostly women's) until we found the perfect outfits. Our costumes ended up costing a total of 30 SEK ($5) each and so we decided to buy swords from the toy shop for our accessories (another 30 SEK).

I had no bandana and so I borrowed a kitchen towel to serve the purpose. We then had Houda put eye liner on us so we'd look like Johnny Depp did and then had a photo shoot.

We had to meet the others at the train station and it was really funny seeing the looks that people were giving us. Everything was going great and then we arrived. Entrance to the museum required membership or 20 SEK to get in. Not a big deal but annoying. Then, the most monotone, slow speaker in the history of history told us about the museum and the boat. When he asked if anyone had questions, I was hoping so badly that no one would ask questions - not because it was uninteresting, but because he wasn't excited about it at all.

To dinner we go, yo ho! I really liked the mushroom soup and beef stew but I thought there would be more. We had to pay for water as well so we drank Cider instead. When Keaw drinks, Keaw gets tired and when Keaw gets tired she starts leaning on people. So I played a little joke on her.

She had told me before that the "captain" weirded her out. The captain was a short, stocky man with an elongated pipe that contained no tobacco. He had reddish-brown hair and had the voice of a Viking. His eyes were small and dark blue with a glare to them. They reminded me of pebbles in a brook. The timing was perfect. Keaw said in her usual Thai accent, "John, I'm so tired" and "fell" on my shoulder. The captain was walking around making sure that everyone at the other tables was enjoying him/herself. He was just close enough to be in shouting earshot and so I yelled, "Captain, it looks like we have one fallin' asleep 'ere!" By the time Keaw had processed what I had said, the captain was hovering over her belching out a story of what happened to the last damsel that fell asleep on his ship. Keaw was startled. She grabbed my right arm with both hands and squeezed with a humored anger. And with every sentence he spoke, he leaned in and cocked his eyebrow while he varied his tone accordingly. And with each movement he made, Keaw leaned farther away from him and cowered into my side like a little kid. Apparently the last dame that had fallen asleep on his ship was passed around from man to man doing with her as he pleased. He left our table and we were laughing our asses off. Keaw was hitting me but I couldn't stop laughing.

The meal was over a lot sooner than expected and we were singing Yo ho, yo ho, and a bottle of rum quite badly. Just imagine a native English speaker having trouble with the words. Now imagine people who don't speak English on a regular basis trying to sing it. Yes, quite bad. hahah Then, there was nothing going on for about an hour so we just sat around and talked. Suddenly we heard music. We scurried to the other room and started dancing only to be told 2 songs later that they were going to be doing the costume contest. The dancing would have been much better.

They announced that for the costume contest, each person would get up and say a short story about the pirate s/he was. Everyone else at the party was part of the organization and had prepared speeches. They told me I was going first. Crap, what to say...what to say...Hello! I am John Chin and I hail from the ancient...(oh crap) ancient colony of ...America! (booooo) Originally I came with intentions of being a pirate, but it turns out that I am now the court jester. You can see this from my fancy dress and woman's shirt (take it off! take it off!). (Flashes crowd with manly chest for 2 seconds) That's all you get! That's it! And I was done; probably the worst performance I've had...except for that one time in Brittain :-P

Stefano crashed and burned as well, but it was okay because everyone's was quite awful. We should have stuck to dancing. When the presentations started, Robert slyly, but confidently got up, looked at me with his usual nonverbal nod of, "John, I'll see you after this is over. Good luck." Keaw bolted out of the room. Chickens may be chickens but chickens are sometimes smart.

Then again, because they left, they ended up meeting Simo who was from Finland and he found Keaw very pleasing to the eyes. She tried to pawn me and then Robert off as her boyfriend. But even very drunk, Simo was not fooled. That, or he just didn't care. So after the presentations were over, we went to the bottom of the boat and tried to figure out where exactly to sleep. Simo was down there and had some Vodka and shouted to Keaw the distance of the hull to the stern for her to come and try it. She politely declined and came back to our group. Simo followed. He was very persistent and asked Keaw if she had found the guy she was going to go to sleep with that night. Keaw was offended but he told everyone that in Finland, this was the culture. Since Keaw was not that kind of girl, he looked around and tried to hit on the next girl without success. Still it was quite amusing to watch.

There was not enough room below the ship to sleep so we ended up going back inside the museum and slept on the very frigid floor. Keaw and Stefano didn't bring any covers and so they got clothes that were lying around in the room and made beds with them. By this time we were all humorously perturbed and Stefano was cursing pirates in general as he lay down to go to sleep. Only 2 incidents happened whilst I slept.

1. Someone else from the group came in and slept in the same room and was snoring so loudly that it woke me up. Apparently I had been snoring too, but it wasn't my snoring that woke me up. And no, I don't usually snore - my nose was stuffed thank you very much.

2. A drunk guy from the streets hurled himself through the emergency exit around 3 AM and very incoherently asked if he could sleep here. No, seeya! And we locked the door.

So in the morning, we all hadn't slept that much and were in no mood to do a scavenger hunt, so we went back to Spoletorp. All in all a good trip because of the friends.