the blue horizon

Strung Treng was an unexpected stop over, more a hospital visit then the usual tourist stuff. I was waiting in a guest house restaurant for the bus to Laos when i was rather suddenly overcome with a fever and fatigue. I rented a room and slept for almost 24 hours straight. The manger was understandably concerned, he thought it might have been Malaria, and sent me to the doctor for tests. It wasn't Malaria but was probably Dengue Fever but I needed a 10 hour bus trip back to Phnom Pehn to confirm this. Either way the 'cure' was Panadol, plenty of water and rest. I was going to do this in Laos anyway so decided against the bus back to Phnom Pehn and caught the bus to Laos the next day instead.

We were piled into a minibus for the trip to Ban Lung. I shared the back seat with three other adults and three children. Once of the highway the roads turned to shit, all mud and potholes. Cambodian Kids start being cute when they smile, wave and say hello. They stop being cute when they start throwing up either side of you. The trip was slow but there was a welcome change in the scenery as it went from rice fields to woodlands and forest. The few days I was here were spent on a moto checking out the country side. Two or three waterfalls were pretty nice, one you could walk behind. Another I couldn't make it to as the road was clay, no traction when wet. The rear wheels would fish tail everywhere and I need my legs to act like training wheels. The catch 22 of the wet season. All the waterfalls and river are at their best but the roads turn to mud and it can be near impossible to see them. Both days I finished at Boueng Yaek Lom. A crater lake, volcanic or meteor in origin I'...

The bus trip to Kratie was long like any other in Cambodia but I had the luxury of the five back seats to myself. Kratie is a town on the banks of the Mekong. The Mekong is one of those rivers that remind you of just how small the Murray River is. In some places you can barely make out the details on the other side. Not much to do in Kratie but watch the river, the sunset and the occasional lightning storm pass by. You could also sit in the guest house uncomfortably amused at the Kiwi guy who runs the place coming to grips with the fact that his retirement will be spent dealing with Khmer staff that were never quite sure what he was trying to say. It had a weird 'at a mates place and his parents are arguing' kind of vibe to it. Still the workers weren't paid, just meals and board, so he probably deserved all the hassle he got. Hired a moto and followed the river north for the day. Stopped at few villages, a few temples, and Kampi to catch a boat to try to catch a glim...

The travel gods smile upon this lucky idiot. I had to change buses in Phnom Pehn. I was walking around a crowded bus station looking for my next bus when a girl tapped me on the shoulder. My camera had slipped from my bag during the last trip and had fallen down behind my seat. Amazed that I got it back. Some good natured citizens aside Phnom Pehn didn't look too appealing, thought I might give it a miss and spend a few more days somewhere a little prettier to look at. Siem Reap was one of the more attractive towns in Cambodia, clean streets, nice landscape gardening. Lots of Hotels of course. As nice as it is there isn't a lot to do in town. The markets are shit, t-shirts, jewellery, painting, wood work, same same, but still shit.  The local market out of town a bit was more interesting and relaxing. Almost anything you could think of to buy and no hassle, but the smell of rotting fruit and raw meat and fish in an enclosed space gets to you after a while, like it does in B...

Hired a bike. problem with such amazing scenery is that you can easily get disorientated and end up in Vietnam. Weird that the more appeal somewhere has, as a tourist anyway, the fewer tourists there are. Sihounkvile was a shit hole. Lots of places to drink yes but not much else. Kampot was built around an estuary. Watch the fishing boats going out and in. Walking amongst the rice fields watching people go about their business. A lot the farming still used old techniques. Water buffalo doing the bulk of the work, lots of hands doing the rest. Not much machinery to be seen. Kep was nicer than Kampot still, Mountains and rice fields to one side, the ocean and crab markets on the other. Had a name for itself with pepper. Was a time that any French restaurant worth it salt would have pepper from Cambodia. War and the Khmer Rouge putting a stop to that. Making something of a comeback apparently. Either way the salt and pepper crab was pretty nice.  Tried to find a few caves, ...

The disadvantage of not having a watch or phone is that it makes it hard to get up for the 8:00 bus to Cambodia, the one that takes me from the ferry port near Trat straight to Sihanoukville. So I had to do it the slightly less convenient way. A pick-up from the ferry port to Trat Bus Station and then a minibus to the border. I get to the border and was immediately surrounded by 'guides' and when they had my attention the kids were trying to undo the zips on my bag. I eventually make it to the visa office, the sign on the wall said 'visas US$20' but unfortunately I arrived on a national holiday so today it was US$50. Plus another US$20 because I didn't look like my passport photo. Then I had to pay the 'guide' who 'assisted' me through the process, and finally I had to pay a relative fortune to get a taxi to Koh Kong.  This is what I was expecting at the border purely on the basis of a conversation with a couple of overly dramatic Germans who had j...

I went to Koh Chang on the advice of my brother. Good advice. Though talking to the owner of where I am staying, he wouldn't recognise the place if he came back now. It's the low season so there are not too many people around. I'm staying in a little wooden hut on top of a cliff just on the outside of Bang Bao which is quieter still. At night it is quieter still, just myself, the owner and his family, 2 labs, 3 cats and the infinite sound of the ocean. Which is why I'm pretty stoked that I managed to swap the *shitest novel Stephen King ever wrote for Dostoevsky's 'The Brothers Karamazov'. It should keep me occupied for a while.  A very rare thing to find a decent novel in a hostel bookswap - usually it's Dan Brown, Tom Clancy, Andy McNab or Stephen King or German. I quite like Bang Bao, even though it's a tourist village it's worlds apart from Phuket. I've walked down the main drag a few times ( a pier in this case) and no one has offer...

I entered Bangkok how I think everyone should, on the back of the scooter through morning rush hour traffic. Firstly it wakes you up from your overnight bus trip, and secondly I think it prepares your brain for the hectic city it is about to attempt to comprehend.  Bangkok is a busy place, too busy?, Always seems to be so much going on, what I love about that is that it would still be this way without tourism, very unlike Patong. I can see it being a while before I get sick of this place. If you were to pass out somewhere on Bangla Road and came to on Khao San Road only to think to your self "Where the fuck is the beach?" you could be forgiven. If there is a difference it's a small positive; a few less touts for ping pong shows and few more foods stalls. You could think of a Khao San road as something of a progressive three course meal with entertainment, of course definitions of entertainment vary ( I guess the same could be said of 'meal'). First course is gri...

Most nights of the first week are blurred into to one anyway so I'll just pretend it was. After a Pad Thai Gai or similar at one of the eateries whose name I'll never remember (laughable that we bumped into some kids who said Lonely Planet said some place was better than the next, walking past dozens of identical places only to realise they probably interchange their names on daily basis just for shits and giggles) we invariable ended up somewhere on Soi Bangla. Some culture was embraced as Longy would put it - I'm still not sure whose culture exactly - and then somehow we would all end up back at our hotel in the wee hours to share a few stories and consider just whose job it was to feed the birds during the day. The days were spent sleeping intertwined with stints in the pool bar, shopping for counterfeit DVD/shirt/watches/suits/experiences or searching out another Pad Thai. We did take a boat trip out to a few of the islands around Koh Phi Phi. 'The Beach' Isla...

Rethymno manages to strike a balance between nice old town and tacky tourist shithole. I imagine that in the peak of summer it learns a lot further towards the later. Pretty much any avaliable waterfront space in the old town is taken up by a cafe or bar or restaraunt and continues in a loop cafe / hotel / car rental agency as you move further town the beach into package holiday territory. Away from the beach it is a joy to walk through the narrow streets amongst the old venetian buildings where the restaraunts are a bit thinner on the ground and interesting doors seem a lot older than the walls around them. I was in Rethymno for Orthodox Easter which explanied the eratic ringing of church bells from dawn until midnight from every church in town for the past week. If I didn't know any better I would say they were competing to be the most annoying. All the ringing of church bell concluded on the Saturday night with a candle lit march from ???? church to ???? church in the town squar...

Athens has at east one thing in common London. The locals have the same amount of contempt for tourist on the Metro line from the Airport that Londoners do on the Piccadilly line. The amount of death stares I got from early morning commuters coupled with a 27 hour transit made me wish I skipped another month and a bit traveling and went straight back to the UK. Athens is surprisingly average to look at. If I couldn't see ***** at the end of the street the view from my hostel balcony would almost be indistinguishable from that of my hotel in downtown Dubai. Ancient ruins aside the building with the most character I have seen is the unoccupied dilapidated thing across the road. Of course as you get closer to the Acropolis and other touristy bits the buildings get a little nicer but someone with a sense of humour has covered every wall in sight with graffiti. I woke early to try and get up there before anyone else. Mission accomplished. The first thing that really catches your attenti...

This post is a victim of Apathy.

This post is a victim of Apathy.

This post is a victim of Apathy.

This post is a victim of Apathy

This post is a victim of Apathy.

I Wasted no time in Sayun and headed straight for Tarim about 35km away. The drive through the fields,date palm plantations and Mud brick villages of the Wadi could have been through rural Egypt. Tarim was famous for two reasons, its mud brick palaces and Islamic scholarship. Most of the 'palaces' were crumbling to pieces but the one in center of town was still pretty impressive. I didn't come across the scholarship side of town until I was drinking Tea just outside the taxi station watching some old men playing dominoes. ost. Some teachers invited me over to have a chat. Like most teachers I had met on this trip they wanted to practice their English and find out about where I was from. When I said Australia they said that there were some Australians studying at the school and offered to take me to see him. It never occurred to me that people would come from all over the world to this little village in Eastern Yemen to study Islam. It turns out there were also people from ...

My driver dropped me off at the airport way too early. It turns out he worked at the airport too. Which also explained why he disappeared for a few hours a few days earlier. I sat out front of the terminal waiting for the doors to open and watched as the locals brought in various goods to be transported to the mainland.. MOst of it was in boxes so I had no idea what was in them but one had split open revealing to goat carcasses. He just brushed them off a taped the box back up. No one battered an eyelid. At least it wasn't carry on I guess. Upon leaving the airport I was asked where my guide was? Am I buy myself? They only seemed content when they asked where I was staying. I just gave them a name from the guide book. I don't think "i Have no idea?' was the right answer. A tourist convoy had been ambushed and three people shot a few weeks earlier in a nearby province so I was kind of expecting this. As per usually every policeman I saw asked me those questions aas they...

Still in Aden I spent a good ten minutes trying to explain to a taxi driver that I wanted to go to the airport. It came to the attention of a passing police car. I tried to explain to them for ten minutes that I wanted to go to the Airport. They sent out a message over the loud speaker calling for anyone who spoke English. I just picked out Inglezi, I assume thats what they were asking. Maybe it was "hey, get a load of this dumb English guy." Either way a guy came over from a nearby cafe and asked in English what I wanted. I said I wanted to go to the airport. And he said to them in Arabic exactly what I had been saying in Arabic for the past twenty minutes. The look of their faces said somelike "oh, the AIRPORT." After a sleepless night on account of the fan not working and having to get up 6am to catch a flight this would probably be as frustrated as I get, if it wasn't so funny. Not laugh out loud funny, you know, Seinfeld funny. At least this driver was hone...

I caught a shared taxi to Aden without hassle though again it stopped on the outskirts of Town. For the first time in Yemen I was mobbed by taxi drivers as I got out of the car. I played quiz show host trying to ascertain who was going to be the least hassle. The winner was a fraud. The only English he knew was "I know that Hotel, only 500 rials." He was also a liar. We had to stop twice for directions and he asked me for 'only' 2000 rials when we finally got there. I stayed at the Rambow Hotel. Named after the French poet Rimbaud not the fictional Vietnam Veteran Rambo. It might have been quite grand once but now you would say it had character. It wasn't too bad but became uncomfortably hot the second night when the electricity failed to kick/be turned on. Aden was a lot less interesting than I thought it would be. Once occupied by the British I was expecting they would have made left more of a mark on then town than a store that sold Argos products (seriously) a...