Dutch people, Designer socks, and Danger.

I ended up staying in a hostle that night. I was having a beer with a couple of guys I met in the Bearded Monkey. I started to talk about how there were so many casinos in San Jose and none of them had poker. Right as I said this a beautiful dutch woman came up to me and asked if I wanted to play poker. There's only one right answer to a smoking hot dutch girl asking you to play poker, so we were on our way. She was staying in San Jose being a tour guide, she loved to play poker, and had met a guy at the last game that knew of another tonight. He picked us up, and brought us to this casino 20 miles out of town. We started playing a tournament of Texas Hold'em. It must have been about 95% locals, a couple of older retired folk, and us. I've never in my life got such great hands. I must have got 5 straights in 10 hands. This was great for my winning, but then everybody started looking at me and whispering in spanish. We both made it to the final table where you start getting money. She had been knocked out in 7th place, and I was still going strong. Many people followed her, and I came out with 2nd, which paid $250. This made me fear for my well being because all these people knew I was atleast carrying $250. We soon left, and had two more guys in the car then we came with. This is where things get really scary, and even more akward. The following events take place in the car while Norah Jones plays in the background: The man in the passenger seat had a backpack, he opened it and pulled out a hand gun. I started sweeting bullets. He then contined by pulling out bags of something, I came to the conclusion he was a drug dealer, which didn't really put me at any more ease. He handed something to the driver (the man we came with), he looked it over for a while, then handed it back. This is when I saw what it was, not drugs ....... but designer socks. OF COURSE!!! The man was a designer sock dealer! He dropped the two men off, then brought the dutch girl and I back to the hostle. There are very few things in this world that can make me feel akward, but there are even less that are so akward I start to cry, and this my friends is one of those. She asked if I wanted to play the following night and I told her I was indifferent. I went to bed around 4, and woke up to loud noises at 8 where I immediatly had the urge to continue south. I took a cab to the bus station and got a ticket at noon to Panama City. The trip is a 17 hour bus ride so they play movies. Lucky for me they happened to play one of my all time favorites .... Big Mama's House ...... in Spanish! Yipee! We got Panama city at 3:30ish in the morning. This sucked because I didn't really have any plans or anywhere to stay. I found a dutch guy traveling with his canadian girlfriend, I asked them where they were going and they didn't know. So I followed them. They jumped on some random bus, and we were taken to a really sketchy part of town. We decided to find a lighted area, and hang out until the sun cam up. Once up I left them to go get some food. The man at the counter helped me order, so I started to talk with him. He was wondering why me (a gringo) was in this part of town, and said it was very dangerous for me. Natrually I replied that "Danger is my middle name", he thought this was funny and felt he had to tell everyone that my name was Danger, and that it was a challege for him to pick someone for me to fight. I quickly corrected him and started walking away .... fast. Now it's time for me to find somewhere to live for the night.