The Three Asian Fags hit Manhattan at the end of February. Lets go through our itinerary with relative costs:

Thursday midnight:

Fly out of San Francisco International Airport ($230 a person)

Friday Morning:

Arrive at La Guardia: At La Guardia, as with mosts airports in major cities, you will be inundated with offers for transportation as you leave baggage claim. Unless you require luxury to get from point A to point B, we suggest going out and just grabbing a taxi. For under $30 dollars, you should be able to get from La Guardia to about Midtown Manhattan.

Taxi to East Village: The Three Asian Fags, in our attempt to blow our money on more important things decide to take a the gracious offer of a friend of Ming's who allowed us to stay with her and her roommates in her flat in the East Village. The East Village was a prime location for our frolicking activities. Relatively close to the airport, which limited our taxi fare, and (as with most places in the city) located near a subway terminal for easy access to the entire Manhattan area.

Getting Settled: After dropping our things off at the apartment, we had a brief rest and brainstorm of what we wanted to do. After the normal amount of gay deliberations, we decide to go to pay our respects at ground zero and then see how much energy we had to do other things.

To the Subway: Ming and Nam had been to Manhattan many times before. However, Eudean was a New York virgin and so we went through the routine of explaining the subway system.

Here are some useful terms:

Uptown - goes UP Manhattan, as you go up the street numbers get higher.

Downtown - goes DOWN Manhattan, as you go downtown the street numbers get lower.

These terms seem a bit obvious, but you will be amazed how easily people get confused when they have to interpret these terms on the subway. If you are in midtown ... say 57th street, and you are trying to get to Ground Zero (Around 10th Street), then you need to be on the downtown side of the track.

Avenues run the length of Manhattan so forming a grid of numbers with random named streets.

On the subway, you should purchase a Metro Card. These are in various denominations. We recommend getting an unlimited ride card from a machine for your trip. If you are going to be in New York for an extended period of time, we recommend getting a multi day unlimited pass. Or, if you are just traveling on the subway system one day, just get a one day pass for $4. You can purchase these passes form the clerk or through the automated ticketing machines which take all major forms of credit cards.

Now that we've gone through the orientation, we were off to Ground Zero.

Ground Zero:

Amidst the tacky memorabilia vendors lining the shadowed streets is an eerily open space. Here, you find that there is unnaturally too much light and space for Manhattan out side of Central Park. As you notice the tattered shirts and flags fixed upon the chain linked senses surrounding a small cemetery, you turn around and see it. Ground Zero.

The noise of heavy construction equipment and cars emanate from the core of the site. The memorial, simple in blackened surfaces, foretells of the history of the site and lists the heroes who had lost their lives there.

It was a sad but necessary beginning for our journey here. For deep under the obfuscation created by our current political debates, lies an echoing reminder of the freedoms that we all forget that we enjoy and the struggle that our country has dredged through to come to the point it has been.

I will be reflective in saying that the Three Asian Fags will and have continually ranted and raved in every respect about the gross injustices that proliferates through our society. But, here we are circumspect in reminding everyone that our ability to be critical and vocal about our opinions comes directly from the freedoms and social creature that has evolved in America. True, it can be a whole lot better, but right now it's the best thing we've got.

After Ground Zero:

After seeing the site, we were very down in spirit. So, we thought of no better way to cheer ourselves up then by finding something to eat. We headed out on the streets to look for a place to eat, when suddenly we run into one of our favorite stores in the world HM. This store is sorta equivalent to IKEA but for clothes, ultra trendy ultra practical ultra cheap. So we shopped and each of us had new wardrobes for the weekend for just under a hundred. An added plus about clothes shopping in New York is that purchases are tax free if they are under a hundred dollars.

The rest of the week is a blur. I do remember a lot of drinking and eating. I think we all went on a few dates too. You can see the clubs we visiting in our clubbing section. We did a lot of clubbing.

For you asians out there, we recommend you going to the Web. It is a asian oriented bar. You should just go see it so that you can say you did. After that, go to the Roxy its a great place to party and you may end up in Brooklyn.