[Roosh]

Bang Colombia reviews go here.

[thegmanifesto]

I read it last night, its really good, I will do a full review shortly.

[MiXX]

Great Job Roosh. I enjoy your humor in the book as well.

When I first set-foot in Colombia, I did not have any Bang guides, it was a learning experience over teh last decade. Your book is definitely on key, and right on the money.

It has gotten to the point where Colombia does not appeal to me as much as it did 5-10 years ago. However, if a die-hard mission is what you want, they will not disappoint.

Colombian women are also know to be huge scammers. I strongly advise anyone going there to be very careful of paying for apartments, buying clothes or getting in the habit of sending "tuition money" on a monthly basis. All girsl have sad stories of sick relatives, tuition money for school, babies.

Mixx

[thegmanifesto]

MiXXmaster27,

"tuition money"

Ha!

I just got hit up with that one from a girl I met when I went down there last.

[oldnemesis]

(06-29-2010 12:53 PM)Roosh Wrote:  

I'd love to hear what you guys think of the book. I can use that feedback if I tackle another country in the future.

Just finished the e-book, it was a good reading and a lot of fun. It looks like Colombian culture is very similar to EE culture in general - for example in regard with several generations living together (although they're not really into accepting the advice of older family members), non-existent bar pickup scene (people go to bars to get drunk with friends, not to talk to strangers), cell phone games (only for college girls though, as calls are very cheap there) and so on.

A few words about learning Spanish. The way I learned English was through movies. Basically I got a known recent movie with English soundtrack and subtitles, and for each phrase in the movie I played it a few times, translated unknown words if any, listened to accent and pronunciation, and tried to repeat it with the same speed and intonation as the actor. Did it for one hour each day; typically a movie last 7-12 days. In my opinion it really helps in several ways. First you remember the whole phrase which is related to the situation, which makes it much easier for association memory to remember it in similar situation. Second you remember the pronunciation which helps recognizing this phrase when someone is using it AND you remember how the words are written. Third, it is more fun than studying textbooks, and cheaper than hiring a teacher. It requires some self-motivation, but I've got quite good results in just four months. My friends who tried this method also reported major improvements in their language skills. This should work for Spanish as well.

P.S. Something seem to be wrong with donations through Google Checkout as it refused the transaction, so I had to go through Paypal (which worked). Anybody had this problem too?

[doriangray]

I quickly browsed through the book (as I am busy packing - ironically I am bailing Colombia..) and it seemed to be very spot-on. I didn't find anything shockingly new for myself, but all the good basic data was there and it supported my own perceptions. Again thanks for putting it out for free! Although it probably as the side effect of Medellín coming more and more gringo playground.

oldnemesis: thanks for the tip for studying a language! Seems a bit of work but the benefits seem very good as well. Gotta try that with my Russian.. (Bumer is a great movie btw ;P)

[Roosh]

oldnemesis: Strange other people have used Google Checkout today. Could have been a temporary thing. Thanks for the donation though.

[oldnemesis]

(06-29-2010 06:25 PM)doriangray Wrote:  

oldnemesis: thanks for the tip for studying a language! Seems a bit of work but the benefits seem very good as well. Gotta try that with my Russian.. (Bumer is a great movie btw ;P)

Don't learn by Bumer, it is about cheap wannabe gangsters of 1990's. You do not want to talk like them. I'd suggest getting a Hollywood movie you know and like, and then download a Russian version from this tracker, use search as all movies there have both Russian and native (English/Spanish/French) names. A lot of movies have multiple audio tracks, so if you hear English, switch the track.

[NeVerGymLess]

(06-29-2010 02:19 PM)MiXXmaster27 Wrote:  

Great Job Roosh. I enjoy your humor in the book as well.

When I first set-foot in Colombia, I did not have any Bang guides, it was a learning experience over teh last decade. Your book is definitely on key, and right on the money.

It has gotten to the point where Colombia does not appeal to me as much as it did 5-10 years ago. However, if a die-hard mission is what you want, they will not disappoint.

Colombian women are also know to be huge scammers. I strongly advise anyone going there to be very careful of paying for apartments, buying clothes or getting in the habit of sending "tuition money" on a monthly basis. All girsl have sad stories of sick relatives, tuition money for school, babies.

Mixx

lulz, I didn't mind buying drinks , club fees , food and taxis rides for my chicas . But I laugh my ass off , if they tried to ask me for rent money or something large.

[K-man]

I browsed the book quickly, looks like a great read.
I can only imagine if some Colombian girl saw this... especially a girl whom you banged. It would unleash a whole new world of hate. I can even imagine some of the shit that would be thrown at you:
- demeaning to girls that a male chauvinist pig views them as a piece of meat, or a "flag"
- appalling that someone fucked them not for them, but to get experience to put in a book to make cash from
It may add a few new flavors to the twelve types of Roosh hate.
Keep doing god's work, bro.

[zanetti]

haven't read properly yet but looks great - excellent work Roosh!

was laughing when i read the passage about how colombian girls don't really have anything interesting to say - so true

[damok]

"Put your hands on your balls right now. I’m serious—please do this. Feel around. You have two nice, big hairy balls. Now use them."

Love it! Great compendium Roosh. Can't wait for my next trip to Medellin.

I'm guessing that many of these theories will transfer very well to Brazilian game (or south america in general). Considering that you have consistently rated Brazil above Colombia, I'm sure that everyone here would love to see something similar for Brazil.

Bring on Bang Brazil Roosh!! nice work

btw. I donated via paypal the cost of the paperback - I prefer the digital format.

[Aylar]

I think the title of that book is disrespectful , but then again i'm not colombian and the women there have earned it. so all in all. who cares. lol

[oldnemesis]

Actually I thought the first "Bang" book should have been called "Bang USA", as its advice is very specific to the country and girls.

It also would be disrespectful, and this is cool.

[Roosh]

Thanks damok for the donation.

Lavinci: You're right I probably could've gone into more detail, but keep in mind this was originally supposed to be a series of blog posts. It was getting longer and longer and there was a point I figured it was good enough and more detail wouldn't have necessarily made it that much better. Plus there was so much variance with the girls that I didn't want to overdo it on the generalizations. Guys will meet Colombian girls that are probably nothing like I describe.

[colombia]

Great e-book. It has a lot of good information. Despite what anyone says, I still think Colombia is a gold mine in regards to meeting women. There are obviously good and bad ones out there, as in any other country, but I think Colombian women have a lot to offer. I married a Colombian girl, who I met in Barranquilla during Carnaval, and it's been great. You're definitely right though. Colombian women are very easy to meet (much easier than in the U.S.).

[thegmanifesto]

Here is my review:

http://www.thegmanifesto.com/2010/07/ban...eview.html

Great book.

"Great e-book. It has a lot of good information. Despite what anyone says, I still think Colombia is a gold mine in regards to meeting women. There are obviously good and bad ones out there, as in any other country, but I think Colombian women have a lot to offer. I married a Colombian girl, who I met in Barranquilla during Carnaval, and it's been great. You're definitely right though. Colombian women are very easy to meet (much easier than in the U.S.)."

I checked out your site. Break down Baranquilla when you get a chance.

I bet you can share some great data sheets about marrying a Colomibian girl that a lot of people would find interesting.

[MiXX]

Colombian women have such elementary philosophy. It amazes me how simple minded some of these girls are. For instance, one girl sent me an e-mail today saying:

"what happened yesterday is over, you can only live the moment, and who knows what tomorrow brings"

Another girl wrote"

"friendship is a lot more difficult than love, which is why you must treasure it always"

They all have these little "sayings" they live and die by. Most girls have never left Colombia, and their only knowledge of the world is TV soap operas (huge in Colombia) and Movies.

Ummm...huh?

[El Viajero]

Well done.

[Roosh]

Thanks jmb!

[Arobin]

I read Bang: Colombia a few months ago and it had a big impact on my travel game and my decision to come live in Medellin for a few months. Big thanks to Roosh for publishing this book and releasing it free to his readers. It was really helpful in hitting the ground running in Colombia. Just thought I'd contribute back some constructive feedback I had after reading the book and applying it in Colombia.

Context

-I'm 25.
-I am highly conversational in Spanish, but not fluent. For example, when I go on dates with girls, I can tell stories with ease, but if I saw a movie in Spanish without subtitles, I wouldn't understand a lot of it.
-I can't dance for shit and I avoided meeting girls through dancing or going on dates that involved dancing, but if I ended up someplace with dancing, I'd dance with a girl if she wanted to.
-I spent 3 months in Colombia (mostly living in Oviedo in Medellin) after having spent 5 months in other countries in South America.
-I went out for cold approaches several times with another guy I met through the forums who arrived a month after I did and compared notes with him and we generally observed the same things.

Feedback

(this feedback is based on the free copy Roosh distributed pre-paperback. I'm not sure if it's been revised since then because it did have some pre-release-ish stuff in it, like the URLs weren't real URLs but instead like http://1.bangcolombia.com)

There were several Spanish translation errors. On a practical level, it probably won't affect someone's results to make the same minor errors in speaking, but this is something that's really simple to check and makes a big difference in perceived value for some readers.

Quote:

consider that in Colombia there’s no word for “dating” or “seeing” someone—you’re either a friend or a boyfriend.

This is not accurate. "saliendo con" means "going out with" in the same way it does in the US. They also have a lot of words for friends with benefits: "amigovios", "amigos especiales", "amigos con derechos."

One really good tip from your blog that you omitted in the book is the one you mentioned about carrying a pen and paper everywhere and writing words you wanted to use and couldn't. I did this (and also wrote down words I saw/heard and didn't understand) and it was really useful.

The packing section was fine but I found the packing list on your blog much more useful.

I found a lot of the cultural notes really accurate and useful, particularly the parts about how quickly Colombianas get attached, how affectionate they are, and how jealous they are. If I told a girl I went out to some bars with my friend, she'd often accusingly ask me, "Did you meet girls?" I'd say, "Yes, hundreds!" in an ambiguously sarcastic way and that seemed to work well.

The big thing I think you missed in culture is how signicant the flakiness issue is. You say it's an issue with college girls, but I've found it's an issue with almost every girl. My first month in Colombia, I was getting stood up 2-3 times a week (as in the girl agrees to the date the day before, just doesn't appear at the meetup place). I found out the reason is that girls expect you to confirm the day of, so if you don't (even if nobody says anything about confirming), they'll assume that if you didn't confirm, they're not obligated to show up. After I figured this out, I always told the girl I'd call her that day to confirm and I never got stood up again.

Despite avoiding stand-ups, dates did fall through a lot. I'd generally set up dates with girls for the following day and get a firm time and place agreed upon, but 70% of the time, the next day the girls would either cancel or not answer when I called to confirm. I think the reason is that it's pretty difficult to establish rapport with them on the approach, especially if it's during night game. I generally couldn't separate the girl from her friends plus it's hard to talk to her because we're always in some loud club, which makes it very hard to understand a foreign language. Girls over 25 were more reliable and girls over 30 were generally solid.

Some of the daygame strategies seemed fairly inefficient. You suggest going to the Oviedo McDonald's and warn that there could be "many days here with no approach opportunities." My daygame strategy was just to walk Milla de Oro (Carrera 43 btw Lleras and CC Santa Fe) and stop girls and either ask directions then transition into conversation or just go direct and say they're cute and I wanted to meet them. I did study in the Juan Valdez in Oviedo, but there were very rarely sets there. Once I was sitting on the bench and an HB8 sat next to me and I followed the "spanish question" script almost exactly and got a lay from it.

One golden tip from the nightgame section was about how easy it is to open guys and get them to accept you into the group. I always just said, "Esos jeans son cheveres. Donde los compraste?" and the guy would almost always be really friendly and ask me where I'm from and start introducing me to his friends.

One tip I got from MiXX for ColombianCupid was to get girls on webcam. I thought this was really helpful as it solidifies the interaction and makes it so that she doesn't feel like she's just interacting with some text. I think you're a little hard on MSN messenger overall and you underplay how hard it is to talk on the phone. As I said, I speak Spanish well, but I always found it extremely difficult to understand girls on the phone since the sound is much worse and a lot of times the girl is out somewhere noisy or otherwise is in a house with she shares with 8 family members who are all chattering in the background. MSN Messenger was generally much smoother and if you quickly get down to pushing for a meetup and get out, you don't get trapped in a boring, drawn out conversation.

The section about the post-lay cab fare shakedown was creepily accurate.

I tried to go to Escobar Rosas when I was in Bogota and it seemed like an abandoned building with no signs of a club, but I can't say for sure since I only went one night (Thursday or Friday, don't recall).

The "where to live in Medellin" section is organized in a very confusing way because you give overviews of the neighborhoods, usually based on what bars are in the area. Then you say "After figuring out where to lodge, it's time to meet girls!" and you start discussing bars again. The result is that information on places to go out is arbitrarily split into two different sections. There were a few times when I remembered you mentioning a bar in one neighborhood, then referring back to the section where you discuss nightlife in that neighborhood and being unable to find it because it was actually in the lodging section.

You misspell the name of the bar La Octava as "La Octavia" several times. I went there a few times and found it pretty unremarkable. It seemed like your standard Lleras sit-down bar with maybe a higher proportion of guys.

[Roosh]

Tough review, but appreciated.

A lot of the Spanish errors were corrected for the current version.

My next Bang guide (Iceland) improves on the organization issue.

[UgSlayer]

What's this about a free ebook?

[Roosh]

Bang Colombia was free for the first month. I asked for donations instead. Now I ask for cold hard cash ($10).

[Tigre]

Here are my comments from reading Bang Colombia, as someone who spends many months per year living in the country.

I'll split this up into two posts. First is about logistics, details and improving the Spanish phrases for better communication.

The second post will be further ideas for building the right emotional state. Also insights about the culture and what makes the women tick.

The book talks about gringo hordes in Medellin. They're really only concentrated in 10% of the city. The rest of Medellin, you'd hardly ever see one. It's true that there are lots of hostels in Medellin with lots of travelers. They spend most of their waking hours drinking beer on the patio and chatting about travel, doing drugs in the room and watching DVD's around the hostel.

To never see a gringo in Medellin, just do the following:
Avoid Blue and Babylon at any time
Avoid Eslabon Prendido on a Tuesday and Bendito Seas on a Thursday
Stay away from Oviedo mall, Parque Lleras and the walk downhill to the Poblado metro station.

I really enjoyed Roosh's Medellin Diaries. I did shake my head while reading it because the venues he was initially going to were all heavily on the backpacker circuit. There are plenty of other options in the city.

On the choice between Bogota vs Medellin and Cali. Choose Bogota if you like the pace of big cities. Choose Medellin or Cali if you like something more provincial. Even the area in the city you decide to stay in will affect how you feel about the place. Pick to suit your style.

Venues in Cali. Don't bother with Avenida Sexta. It's decades out of fashion and is one of the least interesting parts of the city. Malls are an option for early evening. They have bar zones. Casual people traffic is much better than what you'd find along La Sexta.

Spanish phrases

"Quieres tomar algo otra vez?" means Do you want to drink something again (right now)?

Instead, use
"Quieres tomar algo en otro momento?" or
"Quieres tomar algo en otra ocasion?"

"Tienda de animales" is not widely used in Colombia.

Use "tienda de mascotas", which is the name for a pet shop.

"...una pregunta de español" is confusing

Use "...una pregunta sobre el español"

The line about music "es popular por aqui?". To Colombians, the word popular means downmarket or ghetto. They would interpret that question as asking whether this venue is ghetto.

Use "es muy escuchada aqui?"