What comes to mind when you think of New Orleans? Hurricane Katrina? Thick southern accents? Cajun food? Vampires? Yes, it has all these things (well, I can't be 100% sure about the vampires but I didn't see any evidence to the contrary) and for 4-6 days, it hosted the second MSP international meet-up consisting of myself, @clayboyn, @discordiant, @aggroed, @crimsonclad and @followbtcnews.

Like the Florida meet-up, there were shenanigans aplenty and a good time was had by all. Luckily for you, what happens in NOLA (local speak for New Orleans, Louisiana) doesn't stay in NOLA.

New Orleans airport is the worst

I arrived a couple of days before everyone else for several reasons:

1. I like direct flights but COPA only flies between Panama City and New Orleans a couple of times a week. Thursday would have been ideal but it is not one of their days. Direct flights from here are only four hours as opposed to flying somewhere further away and then dicking about in an airport waiting for the connection. No.

2. The COPA flights arrive at 22:30 on the days they go and I assumed that I would spend at least an hour getting through immigration. Leaving Wednesday and then having all day Thursday and Friday in NOLA was preferable to flying Friday and not getting there until it ticked over into Saturday. I FOMO'd a bit since Disco and Aggy both arrived on Friday and I didn't want to miss out on anything.

The US is awful for immigration at the best of times, but it turns out New Orleans is even more awful since a new airport is due to open in 2019. This means there is no automation at all, and no ESTA line. I had to line up with the Latinos coming off my flight who all need visas. The visa line ALWAYS takes longer than the ESTA line. Then just to make it even slower, there were only two people processing the non-Americans from our entire flight. Urgh! So New Orleans, you are officially the worst US international airport I've been through so far.

Clay offered to pick me up from the airport. Finally, I was through immigration and after doing 50 million airport blockies, my Cluber (see what I did there?) arrived and we headed back into town.

I 💚 Whole Foods

Normal people make a list of all the exciting places they want to visit when they take an overseas trip. All I wanted to do was go to Whole Foods, pick up all my Amazon shopping (which was getting delivered to Whole Foods since it's now owned by Amazon), go to some vegan restaurants, and post something to Canada for repair since it was going to cost a fortune to send from Panama.

On Thursday I went to Whole Foods three times; twice with Clay, and once by myself. I think I went at least once every other day I was there. What can I say? I'm an upper-middle-class white chick so Whole Foods is my Mecca. It's just so vegan-friendly and nice.

The Airbnb fiasco

On Friday Clay and I left the hostel early and went to our Airbnb since someone was in the one good shower and Clay didn't want to wait or use the other showers. This was not our original Airbnb booking. Long story short, there was a bunch of fuckery going on but Airbnb (the company) sorted it eventually after I unleashed some choo-rage. They also gave us some credit meaning we could upgrade to something better. Yay! The beds at the new place were so good since they all had Tempurpedic mattresses. I lay on them all when we arrived.

There was really only one thing that bothered me about the Airbnb. All the other MSP peeps are essentially Tundra people of the north who didn't like the glorious heat and wanted the airconditioning set to zero degrees Kelvin at all times. Bah! Get back over the wall!

The New Orleans Bounce

On Friday Clay and I went to Walmart. Now, I've been to Walmart in Mexico and Hawaii, but not a mainstream America one, where I'm guessing all the people of Walmart come from. I was already excited about this 'cultural experience', but there was more.

While sitting in Clay's truck before we went in, he introduced me to the New Orleans Bounce, and more specifically a popular song from 2011, which we think was filmed in the very Walmart we were about to enter.

Warning: this video may be harmful to your eyes, your intelligence, your grasp of the English language, and you can not unsee it once you've seen it.

Regarding a 'people of Walmart' experience, we got one right off the bat. Some crazy lady walked past us carrying four bottles of malt liquor muttering to herself. Oh Walmart, you didn't disappoint at all.

Veggie restaurants

I'd already sussed out where I wanted to eat before I even booked my flights. The Cluber drove me to an amazing vegan restaurant called Sweet Soulfood. This is proper cajun food. It is not fancy, but it is good value and frequented by lots of locals. Everything I tried had so much flavour. It was a taste sensation. Crimmy and I ate here on Monday and she also gave it the thumbs up.

Conclusion: vegan cajun food is totally delicious.

Then, to make this place even better, they had vegan pralines, which Clay described as being like crack. This stuff is so moreish but my teeth felt like they were about to fall out after just one.

The other vegan restaurant I ate at was Good Karma Cafe. I had a spicy burger based on the recommendation of the woman who worked there. It was an awesome veggie burger and the place had a nice hippy vibe, being attached to a yoga studio and all. I didn't have anything else here since it was up the road from Whole Foods, where I had a vegan brownie for dessert.

On Monday we went to the famous Cafe du Monde. Technically it's vegetarian since it only sells beignets, which are like doughnuts. However, they are not vegan so I did not eat any despite them being quite delicious according to the others.

Radio show shenanigans

Crimmy hosts a couple of radio shows a week on MSP Waves. One of them is Steemwave Saturdays, which runs 19:00–21:00 UTC, which was 14:00–16:00 our local time. This turned out to be a group show since she set up in the lounge.

Usually Crimmy discusses important steemit stuff that actually helps people, but she and I were drinking so things got a lot less serious, funnier, and probably louder as the show progressed.

There was a discussion about handstands. I don't know who brought that up but I decided to do one since it's one of my favourite yoga postures. Then Follow brought out a cake to celebrate his and Crimmy's joint witness anniversary.

At some point the New Orleans Bounce came up which naturally led to Clay becoming the team twerker. It was VERY funny.

Disco and Aggy couldn't handle all the excitement needed naps during the show. It would have been wrong not to play Aggy's snoring live on the radio since he was so close to the microphone. I think audience chat really appreciated that.

Hugs, intensified

If you've hung out in the MSP Discord server for more than oh, five minutes, you know that MSP people are obsessed with hugs. I knew going in that I would get caught up in several real-life embraces and I was mentally prepared for having my personal space invaded. (I'm still not a hugger.)

The Disco/Clay sandwich was the funniest one of this trip. I was supposed to take a selfie but I was laughing too hard and couldn't so Aggy had to. I also like how Disco and Clay deliberately touch beards above my head.

Crimmy and I both got caught in separate Clay hugs at various points. Fuck! Once you're in one, it's really hard to get out.

Disco learnt the hard way that sleeping during the day does not come risk-free.

Southern Decadence

The meet-up fell on the Labour Day long weekend, which coincides with Southern Decadence, an annual gay festival in NOLA. I bought a Pride dress especially for it. During Crimmy's show, Aggy wanted to try it on. Since it has a very high spandex content and probably wouldn't rip, this was obviously a good idea.

Who wore it better?

Tits and gays

Bourbon Street on Saturday night was packed. We couldn't even get into the festival part. However, there were still plenty of dudes in arseless chaps around.

There also appears to be a tradition of drunk, straight guys on balconies throwing beads down to women in exchange for tit flashes. While plenty of random boobs were on display at any given moment, I managed to score some beads despite not obliging. Ironic perhaps, given my recent post. Oh, I have paid @llfarms like I said I would too.

Back to Bourbon Street. We also chatted with a woman with awesome fake boobs, who was totally into letting Crimmy and I feel them. I'll just say, her surgeon did a great job. Our group may have also scored some weed from her boyfriend.

Of course one can't enjoy various levels of public debauchery without the God botherers trying to spoil the fun.

Just Netflix, no 'chilling'

Despite all of us being a new city, a lot of time was spent watching Netflix. On Friday, I managed to binge my way through the entire season of Safe before the others even arrived. We all got sucked into watching a season of The Great British Baking Show thanks to Crimmy. Various other shows and movies were also watched at random times. I think it's safe to say that we've totally fucked up the viewing suggestion algorithm on Clay's account.

Choo and Crimmy don't die in a ditch

On Sunday afternoon, Crimmy and I decided to walk the 7km round trip from our Airbnb to Whole Foods. There were a bunch of buildings and street art along the way that Crimmy wanted to take photos of. I mostly wanted to get off my arse and do some exercise. We both wanted some healthy food. So off we went.

The route basically went under the (raised) freeway for the majority of the way so we decided to walk one side on the way there and the other side on the way back. The way in was far more sketchy. After many years of solo travelling, my general rule for assessing the safety of a place is "are there women and children around?"

There were no women. There were no children. Half the time there wasn't even a footpath. We looked totally out of place and not from around there. I definitely wouldn't have walked that way on my own, but it was fine in the end and we saw lots of cool stuff. Interestingly, we walked past several old toilets dumped on the side of the road in various places. Ah, it reminded me of Panama!

There are a lot of abandoned and rundown houses in NOLA. I guess a bunch of people didn't bother coming back after Katrina. The renovated ones were pretty cool though.

@kubbyelizabeth, we found you a pink house!

Later we went to a cemetery. The graves are all above ground in New Orleans since most of the state is below sea level. I didn't see any vampires.

Oi, stop taking the piss!

As the token Aussie on this trip, it was pretty much a given that the others would take the piss out of my accent and various words I use that they don't. This started soon after Clay picked me up from the airport. His phone was dead so we drove to Maccas so I could connect to their wifi and download a route to the hostel. Since my Google account defaults to Australia, the Google Maps lady is Australian. We quickly learnt that Americans don't say "slide left/right" at forks nor use the term slip lane, so this amused Clay. Having directions called out in metres/kilometres also threw him a bit since Americans aren't used to dealing with the vastly superior metric system. From there, it basically spiralled into a weekend of everyone yelling "oi" and "shit cunt" in accents that sounded more English than Australian.

All good things come to an end

And then just like that, the weekend was over. Aggy left on Sunday afternoon, Follow on Monday, then Crimmy and I at 4am Tuesday since we both had early flights. Unsurprisingly, getting out of the US is much easier than getting in.

So until next time, I'll leave you with the weirdest shit I saw on this trip: an airport toilet with electric plastic wrap seats, and rows of pickled pigs lips at Walmart. Mmm. Tasty!

I don't think these things will make America great again.

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Top photo: Pixabay
Wholefoods logo: Wikimedia Commons
All other photos were taken by myself, @clayboyn or @discordiant.

Footer by @ryivhnn