Last night a friend (let's call him K) invited me and a few other friends to go with him somewhere.
We didn't ask too many questions (we were on holiday) and piled into a van with him and set off. We traveled through a semi-rural mountain range and reached our destination - this old-looking, moss-covered stone structure, like some kinda temple or fort. Apparently it had been converted into a base for insurgents of some kind, and all of a sudden K had us suiting up, arming ourselves with an arsenal that had apparently been in the van this whole time and following his lead to infiltrate the place.
Our stealthy infiltration had... various levels of success, but bottom line is we made it inside and were able to paint accurate coordinates to call in an airstrike on the base. There was actually a large courtyard inside the structure, in which were various (also very old) buildings built out of wood and decorated in an intriguing traditional fashion. I'm not sure if they'd been a market or what, but now they became the scene of various running gun-battles.
Anyway, we fought/fled our way back outside, miraculously without having lost anyone. As we neared the exit, at one point I stopped in this spot where I could see into one of the main corridors leading outside through this screen of foliage, which looked kinda like Old Man's Beard or whatever it's called (you know, that weird dry dangly stuff that grows on certain trees in certain climates?).
From this position I was able to not only cover the others, but gun down three hostiles at close range as they came sprinting down the hall after us.
After we were out and scrambling into the van, somebody radioed whoever we were working for with the co-ords and almost at once an aircraft shot by overhead and a single bomb came down, slamming into the compound with devastating and spectacular effect. The ancient, moss-choked masonry crumbled in parts, and when the dust cleared I realised I could see the wooden structures inside still standing. I pointed this out, thinking it was a problem, but according to K our aim was to destroy the rest of the complex without also destroying those, ostensibly since they had some great historical or spiritual value - and weren't of much use to the enemy, anyway.
We sped off, exhilarated with victory. Chattering excitedly, I asked (somewhat belatedly) if we were, in fact, getting paid for what we'd just done and K said yes, we were heading back to receive our pay now. I was pretty stoked about that, since it meant that we were literally now mercenaries! How badass.
As we made our way back down the mountain range excitement died down a little, though the group was still in a great mood. We passed a little cluster of ramshackle stores and my eagle-eyed gaze spied what appeared to be some VHS tapes! We stopped the van and got out, unarmed and peaceful this time, to investigate.
We wandered into this little open-air store and I went straight for one of these wire baskets where I'd spotted the "tape". To my disappointment, it turned out to actually just be the artwork from the VHS version of some obscure foreign film printed on an abnormally large, strangely square DVD case. I flipped through a stack of different DVDs and it was the same story, no actual tapes to be found. Damn.
Oh well, we still enjoyed ourselves perusing this weird little mountainside shop and its selection of films, wares, snacks and pop culture-shock. As we lingered around a bit longer I spotted someone kinda familiar enter the store. "Is that Christopher Walken?" I thought to myself.
As it turned out, yes it was. Not sure what he was doing in that neck of the woods since I was either too shy to ask or didn't think to, but he did chat briefly with our group and seemed like as awesome a dude as you'd expect. Then a bit later he was attempting to buy a bulk amount of the weird films on offer (it was like, 30 films for $30 or something, I guess it was a special deal aimed at tourists spending dollars) but to the consternation of the shopkeeper he had a 31st film that he also wanted to chuck in, whilst still only paying the $30.
This shopkeeper was not having any of his attempts to haggle. There was a bit of confusion for a while, and to my dismay I didn't have any money with me that I coulda loaned him (this 'mercenary blowing shit up and getting paid' business was great for more reasons than one - such as, I was broke). He didn't have any more foreign dollars with him, either, and I don't think any of us had much in the way of whatever the local currency was. So, that was a bit disappointing.
We all left, I think Mr. Walken said his goodbyes and went to get more cash out or something (or perhaps he just bought the 30 films and called it a day? Can't remember) whilst the rest of us strolled towards the van, passing a variety of intriguing shops and restaurants way out here on this dreary, drizzly mountaintop. Pretty sure the ground was unpaved, too, just dirt and gravel.
At that point I spotted something rather unpleasant, though perhaps not too surprising in a little village such as this. Up ahead of us there was a dog going about its business, fairly cute apart from the
horrible, ragged growth of unspecified skin hanging from some point on its hindquarters. As I watched, to my horror, the doggo casually reached back, took this flap of flesh in its mouth and gave it a thorough, evidently rather satisfying gnawing. Eurrhghghghhhhh.
I was thoroughly disgusted and went to point this out to the friend I was walking with (let's call him G). Pretty sure he'd already seen it as well but we had a good, gross-out laugh about the spectacle. "Oooh," G said, assuming a gruff, comical voice for the dog, "that's right, I left somethin' tasty in muh back pocket there,
mmmmmmnomnomnom."
Laughing, we made it back to the van with the rest of the group (me making vague, easily-forgotten plans to come back and browse that DVD selection more thoroughly when I had money in my pockets), everyone got in and we set off, back down the mountain to get paid, and at some point I woke up.
Tl;dr: a friend tricked me and a bunch of other friends into joining him on a military op to infiltrate and destroy some insurgent base and a good time was had by all, oh and on the way back we met Christopher Walken in a stall selling bootleg DVDs. If there's a deeper meaning to this dream, I think it might be that I really oughtta catch up with those friends to play some games and watch some movies (both things I've been meaning to do anyway), some of which movies should ideally star Christopher Walken.
I think the structure we exploded and a lot of the jungle around it may have been very loosely based on the vague ideas of Vietnam I've gleaned from books, stories, photographs and other media, but a lot of the other scenery reminded me of Indonesia, specifically Bali. Such as the shop selling DVDs, although I don't remember its layout very well - I know it had those classic white tiles over the floor , pillars and covering its exposed concrete foundations.
Oh, also, join some sort of PMC and travel the world for free, I guess? *shrug*
As usual, there was a lot more to the dream that I don't remember. I know there was something about my Dad and I helping some folks move stuff, suitcases etcetera, but beyond that I've forgotten more and more since I woke up so I dunno.
