Armenia

Yerevan

: Bird on an old metallic wagon wheel at a rest stop en route to Yerevan from the Iranian border

: One of those claw crane games filled with packs of cigs for kids who like to suck ash

: In Soviet Armenia, ice creams you!

: Marko playing for a pack o’ smokes

: Natural gas pumps

: View across from the rest stop

: Picked up a pack of Bieber stickers back in Sri Lanka and decided to unleash the Biebz all over Armenia

: It’s hard to get used to the driver being on the right side of the car when car’s drive on the right side of the road especially when the wheelman is a maniac who blindly veers into the oncoming lane to pass slow-moving trucks on skinny, winding mountain highways.

: View from a different gas station

: Awesome view from that same spot

: And yes, another view from that same gas station

: Pringles rip-off

: Hilariously, this claw machine had smokes mixed in with stuffed animals and soccer balls

: Armenians just hangin’ out and bein’ Armenian at the gas station

: Horribly fuzzy photo of a roadside homemade wine vendor

: Underpass bums in suits out in the countryside

: Armenians love to booze

: Statue bro as seen pulling into Yerevan, the capital

: I’m thinking this is a Persian-style mosque we’d been driving past but since only less than 0.1% of Armenians are Muslim, I can’t be sure.

: Jaundice guy with a little indication saying that Yerevan was the 2012 World Book Capital – A recognition of the quality of the city’s programs to promote reading and books and other things of the sort

: Another Beatles Bar – any affiliation with the one in Tbilisi?

: The Fans of Facebook Club. “Got way too wasted last night at Facebook and was friend requesting everybody. Even tried ‘poking’ a bunch of hot chicks – none of whom poked me back.”

: “Do what you want couse pirates are free” So it’s okay if I piss on the wall at Tortuga Pub? How ’bout on the drum set? Can I piss on the drum set?

: Face!

: Woody Harrelson was here

: Hell yeah, Bieber! Get some!

: What ees dees?

: Pull on his beard, it’s not real

: Yerevan Gogh. Yerevan Morrison. Yerevan Dyke

: Armenian flags waving in the wind

: Out for a stroll

: Giant crack pipe?

: Statue in front of Armenian Opera Theater

: Locals chillin’ on the statue

: In da club

: Shout out to Trayvon!

: Armenians reppin’ the red, white & blue

: Phil & Alian, the two Frenchmen, posing under Place de France

: Palette boy

: Front of the opera house

: Armenian couple on a date?

: Da po-lice with the Yerevan Cascade in the background

: Looks like someone sliced off the upper part of this dude’s hairdo

: Yerevan street scene

: Dark-colored leather jackets are a dime a dozen in the Caucasus. That red hair on the other hand…well, that’s a different story.

: “ANELIK BANK” – Not sure how this is supposed to be pronounced, but the way I said it was as if I had been trying to say “anal lick bank” in a stereotypical Russian accent

: The Yerevan Cascade

: Some art in the park at the base of the cascade

: Big strapping Botero bro with a baby penis

: I pulled out my camera a second too late to catch this kid in a green jacket hanging from the statue’s pee-ner. It’s probably for the best.

: Armenian couple on an ice cream date

: Badunk

: Sniffin’ on each other’s butts

: Marko gettin’ some. Totally consensual. He asked, she said yes. It’s all good.

: Ferocious

: View from about halfway up the cascade

: What it would look like if Steve-O from Jackass and the liquid metal guy from Terminator 2 had a baby together

: Sunset

: View from the top of the cascade

: The rain, the park and other things

: Armenian bros

: “Hey lamppost, whatchya knowin’?” – Simon & Garfunkel

: Bieber strikes again! This time on the front window of a day care center

: Hey, fuck you, shadow of me!

: Pube face

: Traditional Armenian dancer

: Folk band playing their rendition of “Forgot About Dre”

: Yeah, you better blow that thing, buddy

: My man Ryan in the background with Bieber lookin’ all cool ‘n’ shit on the wine bottle

: Part one of my tip left for the waitress

: Part 2 of 2

: I guess Bony M once ate at this restaurant. If you don’t know this band, do yourself a favor and YouTube their song “Daddy Cool.” It’s fuckin’ amazing – not as cool as their coked-out dance moves though.

: The tastiest

: “You have to pay the troll toll, if you want the boy’s hole”

: A Bieber sticker placed in the hostel room Bible next to my favorite passage – Deuteronomy 23 – which lets us know that dickless cowards ain’t allowed into the kingdom of heaven

: Looks like someone left Meatspin on the hostel computer…that someone was me

: Bieber sticker on the hand back behind Marko’s head

: “Damn, we ended segregation years ago. Can’t believe that shit’s still goin’ on here in this day and age.”

: I wanna suck your stache

: Leavin’ Yerevan…

Goris

: The road between Yerevan and Goris in Armenia’s southeast was mountainous and foggy as fuck

: Enjoy?

: Our mashrutka driver…a mashrutka being a long-distance shared taxi typa deal

: Dog at a rest stop

: The Commie’s make damn good ice cream

: On the left wall up above this toilet, take note of the two-fingered shit smear someone had left after digging out their asshole with no TP. Nasty!

: Statue I saw in passing

: Rock tunnel

: Beater

: Beater bus

: Can’t remember the dude’s name – maybe cuz he fed me too much of his homemade wine? – but the dude on the right had an amazing collection of all things Soviet

: Birth Certificates and other official Soviet documents

: Soviet Birth Certificate

: Lenin Bucks, redeemable at your local Commies-R-Us

: Knick-knacks, patty-whack give my dog a boner

: Damn, check out those jugs

: Paper

: I actually have one of those Commie banners hanging in my bedroom. How you like me now, Senator McCarthy?

: Mr. Girly Man’s got no marbles!

: Comrades

: Flags of the Soviet Union

: Commie boy

: This dude from Bulgaria I used to work with told me that listening to the radio was banned back when he was a kid so they’d discreetly take it up on his roof and see if they could get stations from far away. He could and told me his favorite song growing up was “You Sexy Thing” by Hot Chocolate.

: Commie headz

: Propaganda targeting Latin America

: Cash Money

: “It’s like Lenin said…” “I am the walrus?” “…you look for the person who will benefit…” “I am the walrus?” “SHUT THE FUCK UP DONNY!!!”

: What time’s Commie Idol start?

: Alain, the crazy sword-wielding, wall-barfing Frenchman

: An authentic Communist DuckTales plate

: DJ Iron Kurtin in da house!

: Jerry Lewis lookin’ ass

: Sleepy Armenians

: Stamp collection 1 of 5

: 2 of 5

: 3 of 5

: 4 of 5

: 5 of 5

: Millie-whiffer (noun) – “Someone so desperate for female attention that they resort to smelling women/girls bicycle seats”

: Eastern Europeans love tracksuits. Or super far Western Asians, I guess, since Armenia is technically not part of Europe

: Armenian Dram. 1USD = approximately 405AMD

: Interracial salt ‘n’ pepper orgy

: So hawt

: Marko, who’s fluent in Russian, asked the taxi driver why so many windshields in Armenia have cracks like this across them. The guy explained that most Armenians don’t wear seatbelts and when they slam on the brakes, which is pretty often given how reckless they drive, it’s most often drunken, half-asleep passengers that go flying and hit their heads on the windshield.

: Although it was mid-April, it snowed a few inches overnight

: To stay warm, I turned up the heat in the hotel…if ya know what I mean…

: Come and get it, ladies. Grrrrrrrr

: “I Love You M”

: Goris crib

: Another old, busted-ass bus I saw similar to the one the day before

: On our way up to the hills

: Local shopkeeper

: Still trekking

: Still steppin’

: Church – 93% of the population belongs to Armenian Orthodoxy

: Alain tugging on something he probably shouldn’t

: Church within a church

: Jeebus

: Heading back out to continue the trek

: View of Goris from the church

: Finally up in the hills. Similar to Cappadocia, Turkey – here they got strange rock formations that people had once upon a time lived in.

: Looks like the type of building you might come across in the snowy-ass level of Goldeneye for N64

: Marko said that tying plastic bags to the trees up in the hills is considered good luck

: They were all over

: Alain delivering a powerful speech in French that neither I nor Marko could understand and he refused to translate for us

: This part of the climb was extremely steep. I slipped and went sliding on more than one occasion.

: Jagged Edges

: Okay, first check out the photo that I took of this rock with my camera…

: …then check out this one that Marko took. If you look really closely in that hole there you can see me mooning the camera. When “posing,” I was worried I was gonna back too close to the edge and fall out and be found dead or crippled with my pants at my ankles in a pile of snow.

: Hills

: Hills + fog

: Foggy hills as seen during the descent

: Gate leading to a cemetery at the bottom of the hill

: In the Caucasus, a lot of the graves had the person’s face etched on the headstone

: Tales from the crypt

: I wonder who decides what picture goes on the grave

: Dude’s last dying wish: “Use the photo of me in my striped shirt on my (coughs) headstone” (gurgles), (croaks).

: I did like this cemetery though. Very cool.

: That’s the position my brother used to squat in when he’d hide under tables and crap his pants

: Casualty of the Nagorno-Karabakh War?

: 3 bodies 1 grave? Funerary Groupon?

: Da boss

: Kid

: Goris man

: Couple bros pushing their buddy’s car which apparently wouldn’t start until it reached a certain speed

: A Goris gammy

: Couple bros

: Eagle on a government-type facility

: Face on the same building

: Woman in a little cigarette hut

: Local dudes hanging out

: “What happens in Armenia stays in Armenia”

: Alain riding the spinner at a Chuck E. Cheese type facility

: Sexually suggestive coaster at the aforementioned Chuck E. Cheese type establishment

: They had a guestbook at the pizza place which we all signed. This is Marko’s letter.

: Here’s mine. I didn’t include Alain’s cus he wrote it in French and didn’t explain what it meant.

: Closest I got to any sort of pussy in Armenia

: Painting in the lobby of the hotel

: We went back to the same memorabilia restaurant for dinner the next night. Here’s the one dude serenading his lover, Vladimir Lenin.

: Me, Phil, Ryan & Marko

: Jumpsuit boy ’bout to cap Ryan

: Marko with an ancient calculating device called an abacus.

: Nerd!!!!

: Check out my man checking out a Lenin poster

: Feast/Drunkfest

Geghard Monastery

: At the base of the monastery, a bunch of vendors had been selling baked goods

: Bread vendors were by far the most popular

: They were also pretty annoying. They were yelling at everyone. They were yelling at potential customers who walked past, urging them to buy a loaf.

: And they got especially jealous and started yelling at the other vendors when a dude like this guy would buy 3 or 4 loaves from one vendor and none from any of the others.

: “Imma smacka ya face-a!”

: “Even though our bread is practically identical in every way, yours tastes like shit compared to mine!”

: The uphill climb to get to the monastery

: Gettin’ closer

: I don’t know what this guy was doing, but he was just hanging out up in the grass stomping around, talking to himself all weird ‘n’ shit. Definitely made a point of staying away from that guy.

: You ain’t Armenian if you don’t wear a black leather jacket.

: Inside Geghard

: The main chapel of Geghard was built in 1215 but the complex was founded in the 4th century by Gregory the Illuminator – no relation to the battery-powered, glow-in-the-dark football I had as a child.

: Dome

: Cross

: Front door

: Chapel with mass in session

: Choir

: For a dude who hates church as much as I do, I gotta admit that attending this Mass was really something special.

: Da whole crew

: Preist

: Candles in the vestibule

: Armenia!

: God speaking to Ryan

: “We like church and we don’t care who knows!”

: Ciggy break

: Around the complex

: Being surrounded by foggy mountains made the experience feel more mystical

: Alain climbing a staircase

: Church

: Yep

: Somewhere on the complex had been a bridge where a lot of foxy ladies had been posing for pictures

: Case in point

: Raven-haired ladies. I call the one on the left!

: Awesome mustache

: Damn, son! Check out that Jesus piece!

: Holy Trinity

: “So I held the gun out like this…and I shot that motherfucker right in the head.”

: Gut Guy

: What’s the deal with all this bending over to sweep nonsense? Get a longer broom already! What the fuck

: Awesome tracksuit

Garni Temple

: Dudes walking in the gate to Garni Temple

: Dudes at Garni Temple

: Garni Pagan Temple

: View of the surrounding area from the temple

: Different view

: Bros discussing bro shit

: SUCK IT! Marko!!!

: Pre-colorful Armenia hat

: Post-colorful Armenia hat

: Same mustache guy we saw at Geghard

: Suck it Garni Temple!

Agarak

: Agarak is a border town just north of Iran where Iranian truck drivers head up to when they want some action at the local strip clubs

: Bunch of Agarak cabbies

: Old Agarak women…

: …young Agarak women who could possibly be strippers.

: I love all the old cars in the Caucasus.

: Heard some yelling in the morning, looked out my bathroom window and realized our hotel was right up against an army base.

: So many vodkas to choose from

: Local Lays

: “Parental Advisory, Explicit Taste”

: Commie Food product. Hope it’s as good as the ice cream.

: Cereal?

: More Commie shit

: “New Cream” – the Armenian Nutella

: Who wanna take a bite of my Snickers Super? Better not if you’re allergic, ‘cus I guarantee a mouf full o nutz…