David Choe Got Lost Looking for a Dinosaur in the Congo

the jurgen experience i'm gonna train hop i'm gonna hitchhike um vice gaming like one of the first vice shows was thumbs up i i uh gavin mcginnis uh shane smith those guys i used to i've been writing and drawing that's how i found out about you really yeah i found out about you from well from two places one from bourdain but two from a video that i watch of you going to the congo looking for a dinosaur that was the first thing i ever saw of you i think that's like then i talked to bourdain about you and he was like you got to talk to this guy you got to meet him and when i saw your show i was like look at this dude this is crazy he's looking for a [ __ ] brontosaurus in the middle of the congo in 1994 i was living in israel in a farm called ramat hakovesh and it was a kibbutz and to live on the kibbutz you have to work and i was the illegal immigrant there so i'm trying i have no money so i'm making enough working on the farm just to live on the farm and at this point i'm 18 years old i've been hitchhiking since i was 15 and i've seen the whole world i've hitchhiked through europe i've hitchhiked through the u.s back and forth and i'm bored this is in 19 i'm like what you go to the eiffel tower you take that same like right where what haven't we done yet we've been it's all mapped out we've been to everywhere we've seen everything we've done everything i'm i have a heart of a of an explorer i want to find new things you know and so i'm living on this kibbutz most of the other people that are from australia and south africa and what i love about them is they're so racist that they don't even know they're racist like i'm the only asian guy there and they're like nintendo sega genesis like they i'm like i got a name and they're like no your name's nintendo i'm like okay and so i'm working illegally in a casino illegally at a wedding catering place and then working on this farm so i have three jobs i'm making like you know under the table and there's a a library on the farm of books that have been left behind by past travelers and of course there's a old from the 70s or 80s a national geographic catalog and i start reading about mokele membe i don't know if that's how you say it but it's scientists national geographic people have spotted this [ __ ] brontosaur-like thing in the congo and the and it's still there and the congo is still it's the heart of darkness and i gotta [ __ ] find this thing i gotta go there like i i was i was how old were you at the time i was 18. you decided you were going to go there i was like i have to go there how old were you when you went 18 years old no no and then vice i'll i'll bring it back to how that turned into vice but so i i get on a plane tons of lying and manipulating to get the visa because it wasn't open to tourism it was only open for to business and so i i make up the story that i'm a i'm a bodyguard to a toothpaste executive and i work day and night to get a ticket to the congo and there's no tickets it's this airline aeroflot and i'm in israel which is close to africa but because it's this russian airline i get on this flight it goes to moscow and then malta and then like six other african countries and then it lands in brazzaville how long like three days almost like like and like a shaky airplane you know and and you know everyone in there is the ones that got to get out right so when they're coming back they're bringing chickens and goats and all kinds of [ __ ] on the plane and wow it smells like [ __ ] and i don't know this is pre-internet right i i don't have any information on the congo except for i heard that there's a dinosaur there what year 94 94 95 i i lost track of time but it was right after high school so 18. so no you don't have a cell phone either no cell phone nothing and the second i get off the plane it smells horrible because it's just burning trash everywhere and it's hot and it's oppressive and i go what the [ __ ] am i doing here like why am i here and everyone there asked me what are you doing here they don't speak english they speak french i didn't know that they're in the middle of a civil war uh i think the two factions were called the ninjas and the cobras like little kids shooting at night the every third bullet is like a tracer bullet so it looks like fireworks i go what is that they're like oh they're just shooting into the air first breakout of ebola malaria and people go why did you do that it's not normal behavior and i go the la riots happened in 1992. i watched normal civilization normal civilized manners you know this is how people are you go to a store i saw that crumble overnight in one night it went from [ __ ] you everything let's burn down let's rob pillage steal everything i go oh it could happen that fast and once again that same kind of oh i think i'm accepted in this country i think people like me for me and it's like no we don't want you get the [ __ ] go back to where you come from so i think you know and i could go on and on about all the traumas i've experienced in my life but i heard people hurt people i was in a lot of pain i was like i i didn't like korean people i didn't like myself i didn't like i'd experienced a lot of a lot of abuse from black people and i just wanted to i didn't know anything there was no internet i didn't like i i felt like an alien i'm like i don't belong anywhere i just so i would go everyone goes don't go to bosnia don't go to the congo don't go to the gaza strip and i'm gonna i'm gonna go every [ __ ] place my life has been very reactionary right my life has been like you don't tell me what to do you don't tell me how to podcast i'm gonna stick a butt plug in my you know right i'm gonna do what you know so i'm in the congo and it's in a full-blown war there's people being um uh we and everyone's like who are you who is this blonde asian here like i had my hair dyed done too and they and so i could go and tell a million stories about the congo but at some point why you were looking for this brontosaurus for real or you just wanted to go to the congress one as well what i i know the kids like to say 100 i've heard you say it too yeah why not 99 just to leave one percent 99 i was there for the dinosaur like like i was so young and dumb and stupid and ignorant where i truly truly thought i was going to find it like i i didn't know enough about like the everything made sense to me because anyone listening to this right now we're talking about a story from 20 years ago right right i was a stupid kid i believed in santa claus very late you know like i i was a bed wetter i'm [ __ ] up man so when i finally did get to the jungle i got out of brazzaville i got up and i got to um this jungle area called hueso then i believed because the spiders are this big and the frogs are this big and how big are the frogs just everything is looks insane the snakes they got snakes out here this big like it was like okay now i believe like every year scientists were finding a new species of something that they thought was gone and i'm like okay the and and it's and then and then i and then i meet the pygmies whoa and and that was ah [ __ ] i don't know what version of the story i should tell because it gets so dark i met a german guy named [ __ ] i shouldn't say his name i met a german guy there who was the same age as me and he could this is in the city and then he could tell that i was lost i didn't know who this guy was he was being groomed to be like the next big politician in frankfurt or something right and so i didn't i didn't get this until later but he was here as his like sex vacation to [ __ ] as many black he liked black women so he's gonna [ __ ] as many curb your language dave to have as many intimate relations with women as possible is that better no the you're explaining what it was it's not a bad thing that's that's what he was doing so i figured out so he sees me as another bad thing to explain things accurately you know you could use other words though yeah but that's what it is right it is what it is but i i i can i can come off i can turn people off when i use that language i want who are these people um people that don't like you no no they're they're people that they want dave no swear dave i came here for g rated dave and i want my money now to be g rated i'm just trying to pg 13 dave that's what i was signing up for occasionally the word [ __ ] pg-13 they have like rules right didn't like two shits 99 okay so i'm with you thought that there was a real dinosaur in there and when you got there and you saw the big frogs and the big snakes i'm like maybe it is yeah maybe it is and what happens is we we go to the last spotting of it right and then i meet is there any evidence at all like everyone i talked to oh yeah yeah we've seen it there there's no like no that's crazy every [ __ ] person i meet is like oh yeah it's in in the last so is it one of those things where realistically there's not a whole lot of people looking for it anyway no but there are scientists that go out there and in the meantime i've never seen anyone murdered before until i got here right i've been through the l.a riots i've seen things broken and burned down and guns pointed but i've never seen anyone hung i've never seen anyone stoned to death and and it's absolute chaos i'm seeing people murdered i'm scared for my life i got attacked one time so i go i need to find now i have to find this dinosaur and i also know that there's a chance that i might never go home again so i write a letter to my parents they don't know where i am they think i'm in israel on this farm like i didn't tell anybody so i wrote my parents this long letter of i love you guys i'm about to embark on a journey to find a dinosaur and i sent it at the airport before i got on the plane to the jungle i have no money i have only one change of clothes i have [ __ ] blonde hair and i i go into the jungle and we get lost immediately i'm a [ __ ] city boy what the hell do i know about the jungle what do i know about the jungle did you have any direction nothing i just i just knew what you know you know what when i landed in the jungle there was a guy that i think i want to say his name is chris that was a peace corps guy and he was there to help build welds in uh this bantu village and he said the place what you guys are looking for he's like it's a you're not gonna find a dime you know he was like the reasonable one and i go how do i know if you don't try you know i still believed i still wanted to believe i was willing to risk my life for it so we get i haven't [ __ ] told this story in so long so we get to the jungle and and we start walking there's a minor trail and then it disappears it's just gone and i'm like we're [ __ ] lost in the jungle we're lost in the jungle so i'm with this guy that the the what we told people he was here to [ __ ] as many women as possible but we went with the story of he is the toothpaste executive and i'm his bodyguard that's a fake [ __ ] story right as we're lost in the jungle he starts to think that story is real hey go fetch me a pineapple i go dude i'm not sure he's like you're not a real executive bro like i'm not gonna get and he starts like telling me like like i'm like hey you know that was a fake story right like he's like and there's no one around so we get lost for days and he starts to really be like humiliating towards me and right on my nerves and we had rations we went in with some crackers and some like tuna in a can thing and i go hey man we're [ __ ] lost i don't know how to survive we need to ration this food out i come he ate it all he ate it all wow and and and and now like have you ever been in that kind of situation where you're like i'm gonna die here like i'm never gonna like hope is gone like i'm in a thick thick congolese jungle like i don't know how to get out and we've been lost for days like i don't know how to survive i don't [ __ ] know how to like i i this is it you know it's insane and on top of it i have this [ __ ] german [ __ ] who's like talking down to me making fun of me and eating my [ __ ] rations like i would pump all the [ __ ] water and put the the water purification tablets and be like thanks and i'm like dude what the [ __ ] man like that i did all that work so we could share it and so he was just he was a dick and so man and you're stuck in this you've been in a jungle like that before no dude so we set up a tent we have one tent and so we're we're in close quarters with each other at night the moon is like this [ __ ] big like it's humongous and you hear the entire jungle come alive like [ __ ] monkeys and like things are bumping into the tent at night like huge insects and like and i'm like i'm i'm i'm like i'm gonna die here i'm gonna die here so the few times in my life where i've been in this kind of hopeless situation the only thing that's gonna get me out of it is if i can control my mind because if i because i'm fall i'm i'm like falling into despair and in the daytime i'm doing stand up to the trees because we're just walking in like circles and i'm like hey how you guys doing all tonight you know so you don't know where you are i don't know where i am i'm talking to the vegetation oh my god and this guy is riding my last nerve and he's and so i could safely say i lost my mind and so we're down to our last food and he and he did it again and i said bro what the [ __ ] did i tell you we got to make this last i'm starving you ate the rations that were supposed that was it and he's like whatever and he's he has a more like dissociated like checked out like like we'll get out of here somehow and part of i don't know his coping thing was to like talk down to me or whatever and so that night and we're we're lost at this point a week and a half maybe we haven't you know i'm [ __ ] 90 pounds i've lost all this weight i'm gonna kill this guy i'm gonna murder him i'm gonna [ __ ] murder him because i don't like people talking [ __ ] to me like that i don't like i've been a punching bag for this guy for for weeks now and i'm just gonna [ __ ] kill him and if i have to eat him to survive i guess i'll do that and so he's out cold he's got [ __ ] crumbs on his face tuna [ __ ] juice from the food that was supposed to be shared and i pick up i go outside the tent and i pick up i pick up a huge rock like bigger than this and i go i'm gonna [ __ ] kill this guy i i have officially lost my mind like i can't i'm barely going to survive i can't do it here with this guy so he's [ __ ] looking at his face and i pick up the rock and i go just like i don't even have to apply any pressure if i just drop it he's done like he'll he'll be [ __ ] dead and i go oh [ __ ] is there anything left is there any common sense is there any light left in my uh i i gotta [ __ ] kill this guy he has to go he has he has to he has to die he has to die he has to [ __ ] die and then i just i i didn't do it i'm not a murderer i can't like and in the mind i'll do it i'll do i'll do what murder dave come to the front no one's ever gonna know he does his family doesn't know he's there your family nobody knows who's who you are this guy chris the peace corps guy he's not gonna [ __ ] say anything you can kill him right now he has a ton of cash that he hasn't been sharing with you you can get out of here you can [ __ ] get some of your pride and your ego back those [ __ ] guys treating you like a [ __ ] like like a chinese waiter or something do it no one will ever know no one will ever [ __ ] find out you were like you're probably going to die too you want to die like [ __ ] catering to this guy just do it and i'm sitting no i don't i don't want to i don't i'm not a murderer and i didn't kill him i woke up the next day and i'm just looking at him like [ __ ] you don't even know you don't even know what almost happened last night we're walking around hey what's that there's a [ __ ] pygmy up one of those 200 100 foot trees he's just sitting there chilling and i go what is that is that a person waves at us 200 feet above you huge tree like just i don't know that's so high it's so high it was so high how did you spot him he was he was like he was shaking a little wow from the place he was to get in front of us was seconds like hi it's like this short was this jungle i mean when you when you're in there do you even see sunlight through it or is it just no it's so dense i mean like yeah there's some cracks but it's this was also in the national geographic why that the dinosaur would be here is because cameras can't see it because it's such a dense thick forest and there's things in there that are like moving and you know dude your description sounds terrifying it's terrible trying to sleep in the tent oh my god god dude i'm freaking out over here um so so the the um the guy comes up he's this short he's like tiny he's like you guys want some honey what oh my god and um this is this is where my skill as an artist has gotten me out of so many situations right because if you're if you're in jail and you have any kind of skills singing dancing telling jokes drawing you're a celebrity so this guy doesn't speak english we don't speak whatever language he speaks so i start drawing stuff like food like you know in the dirt and he's like oh yeah i got you and he and he and he goes and um he brings us some meat that's all charred and i'm like i don't know what that is you know and and i took one bite and it tastes horrible and i'm like i'm gonna starve to death but i can't eat that wow and so it was like a movie he's like come on come on we're walking and you know it's us like stumbling machete trying to he's just like like we get around a corner entire village of pygmies they've never [ __ ] seen an asian person before i'm c-3po and they're the ewoks from blonde they're coming they're touching my face they're like yeah look it looks like he's like i don't know what the [ __ ] they're saying like um the kid keeps doing this thing like uh i go what are you saying there was one older older guy in the village that i guess spoke a tiny bit of french so my the german guy can translate he's like they're saying you come from the stars you're coming from the stars and i'm like oh my god that's heavy so i'm like so i'm like we're saved they bring us some honey they bring us some fruit and i'm like oh god i'm like just devouring it they're laughing at us and you know it's like the national geographic the women's tits are like down to their ankles and um this [ __ ] guy he's an alien he's an alien i told you 1995 i was uh yeah i was 19 years old yeah 19 years old yeah and and they put that um they put their clothes on for the picture they were all naked when i got in there wow um look at my tivos that's amazing that picture is amazing so i um now had any of these people seen it did you ever describe it to them oh yeah so i draw the dinosaur i go here's the dinosaur and what were they saying they go oh yeah yeah there's never like no it's always like okay there's the dinosaur and uh they go let's go and i go they go it's it's through wetlands like this there's going to be leeches like uh there's a disease called bilharzia where uh there's like uh snails under like still moving waters and the second a mammal steps in the water little [ __ ] parasites shoot off the snail like uh like heat seeking missiles and they go in your dick hole and then you piss and [ __ ] blood till you die and i'm like okay i'm done like i tap out like so they're explaining like all the the trek and the way to go find this dinosaur and i'm like and i went i went up until the leeches and then when i came out with the leeches i go all right i like this this is it you know i go can you help us get out of the jungle and they're like it took less than a day that's how close we were to like really yeah we were probably [ __ ] walking in circles so we get out in less than a day i get i get back home i'm 19 years old i start writing for uh for vice i start drawing pictures for them i do comics i'm writing and uh oh no i was writing for a magazine called giant robot and uh gavin and shane would read that magazine and they're like they were ahead of the curve right like when all print magazine right existed they were like we need to go to digital like like they were you know vice has always been free everyone feeds it they go to those magazine shops or wherever and then yeah and they're like we need to have online presence the internet was brand new and they said dave that is the [ __ ] and i told you not the pg-13 but that story gets very dark darker than what i said they go will you go back with a camera and a camera crew and i said that was one of the most traumatic i almost died i saw people murdered there was a [ __ ] virus where people were bleeding out of their eyeballs [Music] no okay i'll go enough time had passed it was 10 years later actually it wasn't it was that was uh 95 and then it was like eight or ten years later and um so that was the one that vice filmed they're like can you go about that photo for the mickey mouse shirt that was earlier that was from when i went with the film like just my camera so i go back and um how did we even get to this the dinosaur the tightness they all see this same dinosaur have you have [ __ ] look at that there it is dude you're [ __ ] on fire jamie holy [ __ ] yeah that one number three number three is bonkers what is that unless it's a log it could be a log so i on my on my second trip back i met the doctor there was a doctor that lived in the village close to that river look at the track and he said he'd seen it really and he's like not uh you know i wonder if any like real legitimate biologists have looked at those tracks maybe they could tell you by the way the footprint like they can kind of tell whether things are fake or real or not based on like how where the weight is distributed like someone who really understands some how these animals would walk i think it would be really hard to fake dinosaur footprints right because the weight it would have to have like it there the description i just read in this said it wasn't that big i shouldn't say it's not big but it's like 30 feet 35 feet it's pretty big it's like a big big giant elephant think about how big those [ __ ] alligators were that we were just talking about yeah so it might be a turtle they were seeing that's why i don't know if what they actually found a turtle through here their dicks were so big like when we went to the river to bathe they were like okay they just take their clothes off and i'm like oh i'm gonna keep my clothes on and i go they go what i go dude i have like a normal penis for like i'm proportioned correctly like your [ __ ] is down to your knees and this was back in the city when i got back to brassieville and they're like bro you know why our dicks are so big i'm like why and there's all these naked kids running around it's like because we never wear underwear and i'm like what like see the girl whose tits are down to their stomach never wear bra it's gravity bro everything just droops like that's why your dicks are so big i'm still gonna leave my underwear on like this takes too much time wait you've never you've never been to africa no never been after dude i'm begging you i i know you're into the hunting and the bow hunting please like so when i texted you like does it have to do with anything africa man hunting in africa you mean so when i texted you the other day i saw that the last time i texted you was 2018 i was like dude i'm going to africa i'll see you when i get back that's right yeah and um okay this is the this is the yes yeah you're telling me this please very heavy so there's uh there's hunter-gatherer tribes in like the arctic papua new guinea the amazon africa but very few like they're almost gone there's very very few people that live off the land and i i just whenever the podcast went off the air and i and i and i ghosted i i just lost my mind i hit my rock bottom and very similar pattern of what i always do when things get rough is i just go to africa i go it's a weird thing to be like rich or be in a country that's rich or have stuff and some as an adult someone has to teach you gratitude like i hear you say it all the time i'm thankful i'm thankful i'm i'm grateful i go but i'm not i have everything and yet i [ __ ] complain like crazy i'm like i need to go i need to get the [ __ ] out here i need to go someplace where where i can i can learn humility i can learn to be grateful so i get to i'm traumatized now by the congo i didn't even go into my second congo story when i went with vice that was even crazier with the [ __ ] chief try to kill us but um so congo is the heart of darkness i get why those books are written i get why people have these mind losing experiences out there because it is one of the [ __ ] darkest countries i've ever been so i don't want to go somewhere different this time do you know the european settlers they tried to live in the congo for a while i met one did you see the houses that they left behind dude when i got to this bantu village and uh chuck his name was chuck chuck if you're listening i know it's 20 years ago long blonde hair from oregon peace corps guy he got uh malaria while we were there and he goes please contact francois and i go who the [ __ ] is francois and he goes he's he's in the jungle and this is this isn't in the congo village it's the bantu village and he goes you go down this tree and you go so it's he's deep in the in the but this is still near a village it's not you know so we go into the in the jungle and there's like a giant victorian french like european house in the middle of the [ __ ] jungle and i'm like how did this happen and he's like so we go in there and uh francois is just like like a some [ __ ] weird french dude that just said i'm gonna stay here he had like 12 bantu wives there's all these like half black half white babies crawling around and he has a ham radio and he's like what's going on i'm like chuck is [ __ ] dying can he said to come contact you he's like okay i'll contact the aircraft carrier and they'll send a chopper in for him i was like oh [ __ ] but yeah that's that's the one time i saw a french victorian i don't even know how to describe the architecture it was like a beautiful french home in the middle of the [ __ ] congo jungle yeah there was a website dedicated to uh those people that tried to do that and it just detailed how it all went terrible for them the jungle just over came the house like you can't keep the jungle back it's too powerful there's too much there the jungle everything grows so quickly it's just [ __ ] i mean you'd have grass popping out through the middle of your floorboards and [ __ ] and trees trying to grow through the side of your sewage system like they're just it's just too much it's wild when my life when you just said too much like i just thought right now every time in my my i hit a rock bottom and my life gets too much i go back to africa so when someone says go back to where you come from maybe it's africa well we all do right we all do you

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Id: M_jPqv3NvUI

Length: 29min 54sec (1794 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 31 2020