Fast Food on the Slow Continent

Let me start by saying this; I'm not a junk food addict at home. I quite enjoy the odd burger but in general, I find that fast food leaves me feeling pretty terrible, not to mention its awful nutritional value. On a value for money level, too, it makes little sense - I'll be hungry just a couple of hours afterwards.

When I'm travelling, though, fast food presents an opportunity to quickly and cheaply recapture the comforts of home whilst (if you're lucky) experiencing a foreign take on what has become staple food for the developed world. Thus far the highlights of these experiences have included a spicy cottage cheese burger in India and a seal meat wrap in South Korea.

In Africa though, my cravings for the short blast of western-ness one gets from fast food were stronger than they have ever been. Perhaps it was the sameness of food usually available when we stopped in towns? Perhaps it was the unintended health kick of eating meals in camp cooked by (and with) my health concious tour mates? Either way, I was always on the hunt for fast food in Africa; leading to the supersized adventure I present to you today.

It didn't start that way though. In the 'taxi' (just a guy with a car hanging out at the airport) from Nairobi airport I spied a huge, gleaming KFC just a few kilometers from our campsite. As we bounced along the wrong side of the ridiculously potholed road I was inwardly pleased that the western world was never far away. This illusion was shattered the next day when we crossed the border into Tanzania to see the roads lined with ... nothing. I was reduced to eating day-old samosas from a cabinet at the border. Throughout Tanzania my food intake consisted of such samosas and hot chips - cooked by the side of the road and often combined with eggs to make a delicious omelette.

As delicious as the food looks, if I wanted it 'to go', it would be thrown into a plastic bag and handed to me with a grin and a toothpick. Invariably, in trying to skewer another succulent chip, my toothpick would pierce the bag cascading grease and sauce onto my lap.

The chip-and-egg-diet (soon to be turned into a best selling book by yours truly) was interrupted briefly in Dar es Salaam when, strolling through a classically African shopping centre near the ferry port I spied a Subway outlet. This was odd as Subway usually enters markets after the bigger players McDonalds, Burger King and KFC - and so far my search for these guys was turning up donuts. Not literally, of course. In any case, $4 later I had in my hand a 6 inch tandoori chicken sub with corn. It was acceptable, but only just. TIA, huh?

A small deviation from the fastest food in Africa is required to acknowledge the pig roast we had at Kande Beach, Malawi. This was undoubtedly, the slowest food in Africa - but worth it. At 0700hrs (quite the challenge after yet another epic Malawi night) a few of the guys from the truck and I ventured out into the village to witness the slaughter of an enormous pig. At about 0800hrs it was trussed up over coals (which seemed to appear from nowhere) and began to cook. 10 hours later, it was ready to eat.

Further south, Malawi's capital Lilongwe provided us with luxuries we had only dreamed of the for preceeding few weeks. The downtown shopping centre had 3 huge South African supermarkets, an ice cream parlour, and Nando's and Pizza Hut rip offs. To my delight, our stay here was elongated by classic African bureaucracy at the Mozambique embassy. The boredom that this lead to, coupled with the excruciating hangovers being suffered by most of the truck necessitated only one thing - a pizza run. When I found out that, for some reason, the delivery driver wouldn't be available to 5pm I took matters into my own hands and jumped into a taxi to collect them myself.

The driver explicitly stated that yes, he knew where Debonairs Pizza was. First stop, the Devonshire Tea House. No, I politely pointed out through the haze of my hangover, that's not right. Next stop, Pizza Inn. No, I seethed through clenched teeth, that's not it either. While the driver made a phone call Stacey, who had come along for the ride did quite well to calm me down. When we eventually made it I gave the customary nod to the Indian guys that ran the place (and all other retail establishments, it seems, in Malawi) and began the 15 minute process of ensuring that every pizza was accounted for. With that done we returned to camp, heroes.

Fast forward to Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe. A 'booze train' - as distinct from the pedestrian and rather boring 'booze cruise' - was the highlight of one of the evenings we spent there. Departing at 5pm from Victoria Falls' dilapidated railway station, the trip promised two hours of unlimited drinks and also some shit about good views or the Zambezi River or something. We had a rollicking good two hours on board and stumbled out seeking nourishment at 7pm. Destroying several roadside art installations, our raucous bunch made it to Chicken Inn, Zimbabwe's very own fried chicken chain at 7.30pm, shattering the peaceful aura of family dinner time for the customers present. 

To call Chicken Inn 'fast food' would be something of a misnomer. Despite looking entirely like KFC, after ordering one would receive an electronic beeper to notify them when their meal was ready. I sometimes waited upwards of 45 minutes for a simple burger meal (truth be told, this wasn't the first time I had eaten there). The burger above, which I inhaled on the infamous booze train night, was intended to be a double chicken burger, but contained one chicken breast that had been cooked, cut in half and placed on top of the other half to give the illusion that it was 'double'. Further, the cheese which was meant to be in the burger and was, for some ridiculous reason, specifically mentioned as an item on the receipt,  never materialised. In classic African fashion though, I pointed out these issues to the staff who cheerily gave me most of my money back.

Botswana marked the beginning of the heyday of my glutton's trip through Africa. Crossing the border and stopping for lunch at Chobe, I was aimlessly perusing the aisles of an outrageously westernised supermarket when I found myself in the prepared food section. Staring at me, from the toasty warm metal warming racks, was every man's dream meal - a plate of bacon, with a disposable fork to boot.

A few days later, thirsty, starving and covered in dust from the morning's drive, the truck pulled into a service station for diesel. Gazing out the window I was certain I was looking into a mirage - staring back at me was the idle 25-strong workforce of a Wimpy's outlet attached to the service station. I bolted out the door and devoured a 'Three Tenners' deal which was fulfilling in that it was fast food, but depressing in most other ways. Even my Pavarotti joke to the staff didn't lighten the mood.

On face value the meal should have been amazing, but all of the elements of the burger didn't really go well together, the fries were soggy and the service (they offered full table service if you so desired) was surly at best.

Maun, Botswana served a similar purpose later that month as a beacon of westernisation in an otherwise very African landscape. Returning from three days bushcamping on an isolated island in the Okavango Delta, I showered the accumulated grime from my body and headed straight for the Nando's which sat proudly at the very center of Maun. The meal was on the small side, but luckily, eating with four ladies from the truck, I was invited to finish their meals too.

Namibia; famous for sand and not much else. We stopped at infernally hot Rundu where a group of us hit Hungry Lion for lunch. I, alone, thoroughly enjoyed my meal, while the others varied between mildly annoyed and fire-breathingly pissed off. The difference was meal choice; I had a fillet burger while the rest ate chicken pieces, which is a gamble in Africa where most chickens are the size of one's fist.

8.30pm, Swakopmund Namibia. A few beers into the evening, I leaned on the counter of KFC, the only reasonably priced food outlet open at the late hour and requested a Zinger burger meal. 'We have no burgers today as we have no bread,' came the response from a staff member straining to translate the rebuff from Afrikaans to English in her head. Naturally, I suggested alternative arrangements; a burger without the bread, putting the burger fillings in a wrap, making bread out of potato chips and so forth but these were not appreciated. In the end I settled on a wrap which was hot, fresh and dripped grease down my hands so that it pooled in the crooks of my arms.

Cape Town, The Mother City of South Africa. World Tourism Destination of the Year 2011. Focus city of the FIFA 2010 Football World Cup. And the place where, on 29 November 2012, I finally ate McDonald's for the first time in almost 10 months. Walking around CT, I caught the golden arches out of the corner of my eye, on the second floor of the V&A Waterfront mall. I stood and stared at it for a full minute. Wordlessly, I started walking towards it and once inside, stared dumbstruck at the things I had almost forgotten existed. The prefix 'Mc'. The denoting of meals as 'Value Meals'. The eternal struggle between Small, Medium and Large. The option to supersize, hidden away in a discreet corner. I ordered, and walked with my tray, entranced, to a corner of the restaurant.

I was home.

Soul-crushing disappointment with a side of rice. And what you can do about it.

If you're a heroin addict, you'll have some idea of how difficult it is, as an Indian person, to be deprived of Indian food for more than a week. The exact period of time depends on the individual - for example, my dad starts to lose his shit if he doesn't get something with 'masala' in its name every 45 minutes or so.

In almost every conversation over the last 5 weeks I have lamented to the generally uninterested other party that it is more or less impossible to find Indian food of better-than-junk quality almost anywhere in continental Europe. The only potential exception is Copenhagen, Denmark (where the Indian community is united by its facebook page) however the astronomical cost puts it well out of reach of your humble backpacker.

I was sitting at Copenhagen airport in July, salivating wildly at the prospect of boarding a flight to the UK - the holy grail for Indian people. There are over 1.4 million people of Indian origin in the UK, and they make up the largest visible minority population there. The reflects the fact that Indians have been migrating to the UK since the 1600s. Surely, with over 400 years of Indian presence in the country, I ought to be able to find a decent curry there, right?

Pause reading for dramatic effect.

Wrong. So very wrong. 

After landing in Edinburgh (and accidentally blurted out 'chicken tikka masala' when the Immigration agent asked me why I was visiting the UK) I ran almost the entire distance from the airport to Zoe's house, and from there to an Indian takeaway around the corner. Breathlessly (I had been living on kebabs, remember?) I grabbed a menu and scanned it for a familiar dish finding ... nothing? I looked again; and observed that the curries were arranged in something of a matrix fashion. Meats were listed along the y-axis and 'sauces' (with peculiar names such as 'bhunia' and 'rogan') along the x-axis. Each meat could be paired with any sauce and the price noted where the column and row intersected. The gruff staff refused to recommend anything, despite my speaking with them in their native language. I eventually chose Chicken Bhunia at random and took a seat.

The meal arrived ...

... and was a tasteless bowl of oil and almost-still-frozen chicken served with a somewhat acceptable naan whose best attribute was its size. I ate it, and then went home to take a shower. The shower not only masked the sound of my sobbing, it also washed out the grease which had already started to accumulate in my pores.

Later that month, I was wandering around the enormous Tesco supermarket in Bedford, England dodging literally hundreds of Indian people (whose supermarket etiquette is no better than those in Bombay, where the first supermarkets are just turning 10 years old)  when I noticed an entire aisle of Indian foods, ingredients and time-of-year relevant cultural accessories. 

Alot of the products, such as those pictured above, were very specifically Indian - and even in India, would be very difficult to easily locate together. Perusing the packaging, it appeared that most of the foodstuffs had been created especially for the United Kingdom.

Finding these things, in a supermarket full of Indian people, no less, illustrated the frustrating paradox of observing the UK as an Australian Indian who loves Indian food. Indian influence was everywhere, from public transport and television to supermarkets and shopping centres and yet Indian food from restaurants and takeaways was almost uniformly atrocious. 

Indians have been moving to the UK for much longer than they have been moving to Australia - so, in time we can expect a similar phenomenon to occur here. We can't let that happen. Keep your local Indian restaurant honest. Tell them what sucks and, if possible, do it in a thick Indian accent so they think you know what you're talking about. For added authenticity, never tip, turn up late to your reservation (or don't make one), speak in a cacophonous din (even if you are on a date) and spend 45 minutes saying extended goodbyes on the footpath outside the restaurant. 

The lives of thousands of students (and guys like me who can't cook) are depending on you.

Continental Kebabs: An academic review

You would think that the unifying force across Europe's many national boundaries is the sense that a united and cooperative Europe is stronger than a divided one. Institutions such as the European Union and efforts such as the concerted response to the Eurozone crisis serve to support this view. But, and I'm sorry to be the one to break this to you, you'd be completely and kind of embarrasingly wrong.

It turns out that the one thing europeans rely on to keep them together involves 100 kilograms of dead chicken and a questionable approach to food safety. The humble Kebab, although referred to by different names (Kebap, kebab, gyros, doner, pita, durum and shawarma to name a few) is widely, and sometimes cheaply, available throughout the continent - much to the joy of carnivores and vegetable-a-phobes alike. The fact that one can munch on rotisserie cooked meat basted in its own drippings from Helsinki to Ankara is, as far as my reasoning stretches, the sole reason for the peace, stability and prosperity in Europe since World War II. After all, you can't go to war against people who eat the same food as you. And familiar food increases the effectiveness of cross border exchanges which facilitates understanding and peace. Think about it. 

Sitting here in Copenhagen on my last full day in continental Europe, with the aroma of garlic and chicken still on my fingers, I decided to give these humble peacekeepers the credit they deserve - and review the kebabs I ate in various cities on my travels. I ate so many kebabs that the most practical way to structure the review is  on a city-by-city basis; reviewing each individual kebab would probably take the remainder of the century. Also its low on pictures because my iphone was stolen a few days ago - perhaps staying in the cheapest hostel in Copenhagen (at a lazy AUD30 per night for a 66 bed dorm) wasn't the brightest idea but neither was surviving solely on kebabs for 6 weeks and counting.

Istanbul, Turkey (Local name: kebap, Price: TRY2 / AUD1.20, One star)
Brace yourself. The worst kebabs I have ever eaten were in Turkey, the spiritual home of the kebab. The kebabs were consistently dry (the Turks have never heard of sauce?), light on meat and frequently completely devoid of taste. I have eaten polystyrene with more flavour. How that happened is another story. It was as perplexing as it was frustrating - nobody seemed to notice. 

Brasov, Romania (Local name: shawarma, Price: RON12 / AUD3.5, Three stars)
What Romanian kebabs lacked in meat quality, they more than made up for in sauce quantity and size. In addition to the usual garlic sauce, the moisture content reached stratospheric levels with the addition of spicy sauce, salsa and wet salad. Luckily the kebab was packaged in a plastic bag, leaving us with a convenient package of grease to hurl at passing strangers. Brooke and I were only able to finish the smallest incarnation, the size of kebabs commonly found in Australia. The largest option was literally the size of my head. 

Budapest, Hungary: No kebabs here, just vegan Indian food. What of it?

Krakow, Poland (Local name: shawarma, Price: PLN10 / AUD4, Four stars)

I thought Poland was pretty much as good as life gets. With respect to kebabs, that is. Pronouncability of language, thats another story. Anyway, the numerous kebabs I ate in krakow were of the open-faced variety (see Berlin, Germany below) and so crammed with fillings that they were invariably served with a fork stuck in them. After some 15 minutes of attacking the monstrosity with said fork, one could press the kebab together and eat it the more conventional way.

Our kebab consumption would have been significantly higher if it weren't for the Polish Zappiekanka- cheese toast on a baguette with mushrooms and whatever else was on sale that day.

Brussels, Belgium: No kebabs, but abuse of arteries undertaken by other means. Belgian chips almost make up for the country being the most boring in Europe.

Berlin, Germany (Local name: doner, Price: EUR3.5 / AUD5, Five stars)

You think the Germans are most famous for their efficiency? Work ethic? Ability to bail out failed states? You're dead wrong. Again. Sensing a trend here. But I digress, Berlin's claim to fame, despite heaps of museums and culture and shit is without a doubt, kebabs. Succulent meat, liberal amounts of perfectly balanced garlic and yoghourt sauce, fresh salad and optional CURRY SAUCE?! This city is kebab heaven. The early-rising sun means that you also save energy by eating your 4.30am kebab in broad daylight. Environment win.

Copenhagen, Denmark (Local name: durum, Price: DKK35 / AUD7, Two stars)

This is when the situation starts to go to hell. Not only are kebabs ridiculously expensive here, like everything else to be fair, but they are of such abominable quality that I actually sat at my table and cried bitter tears a few days ago. They are just ... shit. The sauce is just yoghourt, they have way too much salad and they DONT EVEN TOAST THE BREAD. What's the point really?

Stockholm, Sweden (Local name: kebab, Price: SEK49 / AUD7, One star)

Funnily enough, the low point of my kebab adventure was at my highest geographic point in Europe. Stockholm is a fantastic city but late night food is not its strong suit. As my gracious host Elliot (of Cambodia fame) explained,'Your options are either McDonalds or kebabs. And most people choose McDonalds.' This I refused to believe. Until we actually ate a Stockholm kebab. I should have known that something was us- it took all of 12 seconds to make. Turns out the meat is kept (luke) warm in a rice cooker after being shaved off the rotisserie. And, believe it or not, it gets worse from here. Too much tomato, saturated lettuce and a ridiculous width to length ratio which made it impossible to bite without covering your entire face in sauce - which, again, was just yoghourt. I ate in stony silence, seriously pissed off that Stockholm - the most perfect place on earth - had failed at this most integral of foodstuffs.

There were ups, there were downs, but thankfully, there were no stomach issues. And given what a kebab actually is, that is truly the greatest win of all.

Turkey thinkin': The things I'm going to miss about Cambodia

Despite first impressions, it turns out that Turkish night busses are ideal environments for personal reflection and evaluation. The bus company offices are plush and luxurious. Their advertisements promise personal TV screens, acres of legroom and free wifi. Transfers between bus stations and your final destination are generally free and bus attendants promise to take care of your every need during the journey. 

In reality, however, all of the TV programming is in Turkish, the wifi is only enabled on the busses used for the short aforementioned transfers (as opposed to the 14 hour journey in between), the seat-back tables are too flimsy to support a laptop and the only need that the bus attendants see to is your need to be bumped by their hip every 41 seconds during the journey as they career up and down the aisle for no apparrent reason.

So despite the promise of things to occupy me for the entire journey, I was left with only my thoughts. A place where things can get kind of crazy. Oddly enough, my mind drifted to my time in Cambodia, which I can safely say was the best three months of my life so far. I got to thinking about all of the things I'm going to miss about that place and, by the time we reached to outskirts of Istanbul, the content of this post was firmly entrenched in my mind. Enjoy!

The things I'm going to miss about Cambodia:

• Using the coolest currency in the world, Cambodian Riel, followed by the second coolest - US Dollars. And not very much of either, too.
• Forgetting what hills look like.
• Walking out of a nightclub called Pontoon at 7am, only to have my glasses fog up at the abrupt temperature change from 16 to 35 degrees celsius.
• Feeling like another member of Rathanak's family during Khmer New Year celebrations in Pursat province. Pursat City forever, brother.
• Planning my lessons for the first day ... and never planning again.
• Sok sabay? Sai sabok?
• Hugs and semi-awkward cheek kisses from Mr. Chheang, the best hamburger chef in the world - not the mention the hamburgers themselves.

• Pork and rice (bai se chiru); the world's best breakfast.

• The genuine warmth and affection of every single person at Conversations With Foreigners.
• Setting an alarm on my way out of the house for a night out, reminding me to ride home before the police start manning their checkpoints at 7am.
• Wearing business shirts, jeans and shoes in the stifling heat, both because we were used to it and to distinguish ourselves from the tourists, whom we despised.
• Drinking more coffee than ever before - despite coming to Cambodia, in part, to break my hopeless addiction to coffee.
• Drinking beers at our local ... petrol station?

• Guesthouses where it is not only allowed, but expected, that one park their motorbike in the lobby, for safekeeping.

• Traffic police corruption, combined with their total unwillingness to chase me if I didn't stop and pay a 'fine' for an imaginary offence. This made every day on Phnom Penh's roads an intricate game of traffic chess.
• The instant mood-boost of a completely random and genuine smile from a Khmer stranger.
• The infectious enthusiasm and genuine respect that my students so graciously showed me.

• Pausing a lesson and marching my entire class outside to watch the sunset from the school's third floor balcony.

• Being enthusiastically handed little packets of disgusting biscuits as change when my petrol purchase was just below a round figure.
• Randomly slipping the fact that I never needed another teacher to take my classes for me into unrelated conversations (and blog posts).
• Making the eternally hilarious joke whenever shop staff checked the authenticity of a large denomination U.S. dollar note: "Its real ... well, no actually its dollars." Killed every time.
• Playing chicken on my motorbike with convoys of enormous SUVs on Street 51; Phnom Penh's nightclub and murder district.
• $4 beer towers:

• Stealing WiFi from either the internet cafe behind our house or the European Union aid office down the street. Also the smugness Elliot and I felt when the rest of the house complained at the speed of the shared tin-can-on-a-string internet while we were spoilt for choice in terms of superfast internet. 
• These guys (and everyone else) :

• Openly embracing my descent into alcoholism.
• Wondering why only petrol and pizza were priced similarly in Cambodia compared to the west.
• Parking my motorbike on Jelle's shoes. Every. Single. Day.
• Becoming good mates with most of the Indian restaurant staff in Phnom Penh.
• Mekong Lounge. Reggae Bar. Heart. Pontoon. The local. The Local. The Local II. The new local. Waterwheel. Riverhouse. Gasolina. Equinox. Top Banana. Memphis. Cotton Club. Oscar. Do It All Bar. Zeppelin Bar. Walkabout. Red Fox. The minimart. And the other minimart. Mr. C's rice wine shop. And thousands more. 
• The sense of complete freedom that only Cambodia can provide.
• The feeling that Phnom Penh was my home.

There are thousands of other things that I'll miss about Cambodia. And I've got a few more long bus trips coming up, so stay tuned.

Takeo tribulations ... or how not to get to Sihanoukville.

'Are we going the right way?'


So many travel adventures begin with the utterance of these seemingly innocent words. If I'd have known what would happen over the next few hours at that point, I probably would have taken out life insurance, worn a life jacket and told my family that I love them. But I'll get to that. Jelle, Jo, Mike and I were sat around a table at a restaurant in a quaint little town by a river, bisected by a national highway. The plan was to take our bikes down to the southern coastal beach resort town of Sihanoukville via National Highway 3 as a holiday from our regular our lives in which we pretended to be English teachers and drank a lot of beer. It was halfway through my huge pile of pork and rice that I paused and asked the fateful question.


'Well,' Mike responded,'the sun is still to our left, so we must be.'


We all nodded absently, as if that reasoning actually made sense. Jelle then remembered a gift that a student had given him - a road map of Cambodia. Sporting a grin that said 'Don't worry guys, I'll sort this out,' he unfolded the ridiculously large piece of paper and asked the restaurant staff to point out where we were. For 10 minutes they studied the map, their fingers hovering disturbingly far from our intended route of National Highway 3. Finally they all smiled and stabbed the map with their fingers. We were ... at the border with Vietnam?


'Surely,' my mind chuckled nervously ,'they dont understand English maps.' 


Just then a white minivan sped by. It belonged to a casino. A Vietnamese-owned casino. Across the road another restaurant served rice noodles in soup. In a coincidence too good to be true, three women in conical straw hats walked past. Bewildered and increasingly concerned, we walked out of the restaurant and peered down the road. The guards at the Cambodian Immigration post peered back.


Shit. This wasn't part of the plan. I swore I would never return to Vietnam yet here I was eating breakfast barely 100 metres from the border. Further, I was further from the beach than when we set off from Phnom Penh. God. Damn. It.


Returning to the restaurant we evaluated our options after consulting the map - something we perhaps should have done several hours before. 1. Return to Phnom Penh, take the correct highway and continue to Sihanoukville. Estimated time; 12 hours. 2. Attempt to cross an area marked on the map as 'flood plain' to make it to the provincial administrative outpost of Angkor Borei. From there, a network of roads described by the map as 'Seasonally Open Tracks' could take us back to our intended highway.  Estimated time; anywhere from 6 hours to 2 months. Pride goes before a fall, they say, and not wanting to admit defeat and return to Phnom Penh, we decided to proceed with option 2. Then, I cursed the proverb as the driving conditions would make a fall over the following few hours extremely likely. We all did dramatic, sweeping U-turns at the border gate and sped back the way we came.


So here was the deal. We were on National Highway 2. We wanted to be on National Highway 3. The two roads ran more or less parallel to each other, but with no marked road between them. Instead, a floodplain extended from National Highway 2 to Angkor Borei. From Angkor Borei there were marked paths via which we could eventually make it to National Highway 3. Without any real plans, the general idea was just to turn left off National Highway 2 and see what happened. The roads started as nicely maintained dirt tracks but soon deteriorated into rutted, muddy heavy machinery tracks. I'll never forget the image of Jelle, easing his bike into a huge tyre rut, 4 metres long, almost a metre deep and about as wide as his motorbike. This lead to the hilarious sight of Jelle, sitting on the seat of his bike, but with his legs splayed outwards, resting on either side of the rut, which was higher than his hips. 


Soon the machinery tracks gave way to dried out rice paddies. In photographs, rice paddies look like serene, peaceful areas, but at ground level they are bumpy, rutted, motorbike destruction mechanisms. I spent so long in first gear that the bike seemed to be actually questioning me. Every rev seemed to ask 'What did I ever do to you?,' in that whiny voice that only Japanese motorbikes seem to possess. Some areas of the rice paddies were slightly more worn than others and, presuming these to be paths, we followed them. Whenever the paths forked, we consulted our landmarks - a large hill and a pair of monasteries. Worryingly, no matter how far we drove, we never seemed to get closer to or further away from either landmark. 

Eventually, a number of these paths converged to deposit us at a wood and plastic structure where two men stood, smiling and smoking cigarettes. To say that their purpose for being there was unclear would be an understatement. They provided us with confirmation that we were heading in the right direction and even gave us rudimentary directions on the tracks that would lead us to Angkor Borei. Then, for some reason, one of the men produced a pair of binoculars and pointed out Angkor Borei. We all nodded enthusiastically despite seeing only trees. 

The path, better formed this time, meandered along beside a brown stream, intermittently plunging violently downwards to allow a tributary to access the stream. The routine went something like this, get up to third gear for approximately 5 seconds. See a drop ahead. Scream 'FUUUUCK!' into your helmet, downshift violently and skid to a halt to inspect the difficulty of the terrain. Gingerly descend in first before shifting your weight back and fully opening the throttle to ascend the 45 degree slope. Repeat.

At one stage, the routine failed me. The base of the ravine was covered in straw and as such the front wheel got horrendously stuck. No amount of revving, cursing or muttered prayers would move it. The four of us lifted the front wheel and literally carried it up the hill. It was completely covered in dust and mud and the engine had set fire to some of the straw. I was reminded of a conversation a few months back at the motorbike shop.


'So,' the lady at the shop had asked,' are you going to take the bike outside Phnom Penh?'


'No,' I said. Whoops.


The further we rode, the more bewildered villagers became whenever we asked about Angkor Borei. A few times the question lead to a 5 minute spiel in which the Khmer word for water, tuk, was mentioned a few hundred times. Eventually we spotted a truck ambling along in the distance. Leaving the 'track' we bashed along more dry rice fields, operating under the assumption that where there was a truck, there was a road. And where there was a road, there had to be Angkor Borei. Genius reasoning. 


The first issue arose when we came to the truck. It was not on a road. It was, however, parked next to a large river. A large river which, a local family confirmed, separated us from Angkor Borei. In our excitement we had neglected to consider the fact that floodplains necessarily require rivers ... otherwise they would just be plains.


We now had exactly zero options. A storm was coming, we didn't know the way back to the highway and we sure as hell couldn't fjord the river with motorbikes. Christ almighty, we were screwed.


The youngest son of the riverside family spoke quite good English. He offered to fetch us a boat to take us to a town called Kampong Tuol, which wasn't on our maps, but apparently had a road. We agreed and he dashed off down the river. In the mean time, Jelle and I attempted to help the farmers unload bags of corn from the aforementioned truck. Cracking my knuckles I sauntered up to the truck, confident in my strength thanks to my 5 weekly gym workouts. Two men lifted the 1 metre by 70 centimeter bag and placed it on my left shoulder. Instantly, my entire upper body screamed. The bag would have weighed almost 100kg and I struggled mightily to move it the 3 metres from the truck to the pile. Jelle, similarly, found it very challenging. Enter the Khmer. One handed, smoking a cigarette and wearing only one thong, one of the guys effortlessly carried bag after bag, grinning. All the while Jelle and I were doubled over, panting and, yes, crying a little bit. 


Eventually the boat arrived. It was old, creaky and half filled with water. But it was our only option. 


'You give me money for the boat?' the boy asked earnestly. 


Yes, of course. Fair's fair after all.


'Sure, how much?' we asked. 


'Hmm ... five .... hundred .... dollars?' he said with a completely straight face.


We were thrown. 'Umm, excuse me?'


'Five hundred dollars,' he repeated, more confidently this time. 


We had a quick pow wow and determined that we literally did not have that much cash with us.


'How about, uh, twenty dollars?' I ventured, still completely thrown by the first figure.


'One hundred,' the boy countered.


'Still twenty,' I said, buoyed by his acquiescence.


'Fifty.'


'Twenty.'


'Thirty.'


'Twenty.'


'Thirty.'


'Ok, twenty five?'


'Ok.'


Wow. Could I bargain or could I bargain? Chuffed at the $475 saving we loaded the bikes into the boat, which after a while was indistinguishable from the river as it had so much water inside it. The engine started and we were away, but not before the three crew began frantically bailing water from our literal and figurative sinking ship. 

The journey took about an hour and involved the navigation of dozens of rivers. This illustrated the sheer stupidity of attempting to cross a floodplain, on the cusp of rainy season, on motorbikes. Eventually we made it to Angkor Borei (an added and unexpected bonus) and paid the boatmen a heard-earned $25. Before we continued, however, we spent 15 excruciating minutes in the stifling heat whilst the flooded engines of our motorbikes drained onto the mould-infested sand of the riverbank. 


The paved roads of Angkor Borei and the fact that, after 5 hours, I could finally use fourth gear again, elicited revs of joy from the motorbike. At the town's edge, however, the road ended and was replaced by a bumpy, narrow track which would intermittently turn to sticky, smelly mud. It was slow and frustrating going, made worse by the fact that every 2 kilometers, Mike's motorbike would lose a component or bag and we'd have to stop to strap it back on. 


The roads gradually improved as we got closer to National Highway 3. When we finally rolled on to the smooth surface, to be greeted by a gleaming Tela Mart complete with refrigerated drinks and cans of pringles, I think I jumped for joy. The highway was excellent. Wide, double laned and with a hard shoulder. It was also incredibly smooth and it was no surprise to see a fleet of 1500cc Ducati superbikes  purr sexily into the Tela Mart parking lot, ridden by perhaps some of the wealthiest Khmer around. Some of them even had pistols openly displayed in thigh holsters. Ahh, Cambodia. 


The theme continued as we fanged it down the highway, being periodically overtaken by Range Rovers, Lexus LX400s and Escalades (both the SUV and Utility vaiety) some of whom sported Royal Cambodian Armed Forces license plates - a carte blanche to own any road in the country. Nevertheless, the vehicles always gave us enough distance and the conditions were so good that, even when it started to rain, we were still able to move at a very decent clip.


Eventually, 13 hours after we rolled out of Phnom Penh, we arrived in Kampot, a touristy river and mountain town in Cambodia's south. Even though we were still 3 hours from Sihanoukville, we were completely destroyed and called it a day. 


The night's sleep was divine and although we resolved to rise at 8 and hit the road soon after, a sleep in and extremely leisurely breakfast ensured that we only rolled out of town at mid-day. Bokor Mountain sits between Kampot and Sihanoukville and the three hours we spent ascending and descending the mountain were some of the most enjoyable hours of my life. The road was perfect. The weather was pleasant. We had full gas tanks (initially anyway) and traffic was light. We flew up the mountain, cornering like Tour de France climbers and overtaking lines of SUVs stuck behind pickup trucks full of beaming monks. 


The view of Kampot province from the top was phenomenal, as was the gigantic buddha statue erected at the summit for some reason. Further afield a waterfall provided us with some mild entertainment and the opportunity to get our motorbikes and ourselves completely filthy as we negotiated shin-deep mud across the road. 

Jelle and Jo, both on Jelle's bike, arrived at the summit about 6 days after Mike and I. On the descent however, the added weight on Jelle's bike, combined with the advice that attempting to shift up from fourth while moving puts the bike in neutral and lets one simply roll, made them hard to beat. No amount of aggressive cornering, beeping, snarling, or kicking his back wheel would make them budge. 


We rolled all the way down to the valley and rejoined the highway to Sihanoukville. After short and thoroughly unenjoyable stint on the main highway to Sihanoukville, National Highway 4, we arrived in the town, from where Mike (correctly, this time) directed us to Otres beach.


A journey that was meant to take five hours ended up taking almost forty. And we wouldn't have it any other way. 

Regional economic forums are a pain in the A(r)SEAN

I was on my motorbike one steamy Phnom Penh afternoon when a traffic policeman at an intersection sternly ordered me to stop and turn my bike off. Fair enough, I thought, I am a foreigner on a motorbike which makes me fair game for a shakedown. I settled in for a negotiation over how much this fabricated transgression would cost me and tried to recall how many US one dollar bills I had stuffed in my pocket on my way out of the house. 


And then, everyone around me also stopped. As did the traffic on the three other sides of the intersection. Looking around I counted upwards of twenty police officers holding back traffic. It seemed as if the officers had just returned from a rubix cube party; such was the variety of uniforms they had on. There were sky blue shirt wearing traffic police, beige shirted city police, dark olive jumpsuited military police and plain old Royal Cambodian Armed Forces soldiers with ludicrously large assault rifles. 


I wondered what the hell was going on. Phnom Penh's roads are a warzone at the best of times (I'll get to that later) but the presence of bona fide soldiers made the metaphor uncomfortably close to the truth. Perhaps I was witnessing a military coup? Shit, I left my SLR at home. And photos taken on my iphone would result in me being laughed out of the Photojournalist's Society. Again. 


In the distance, a siren wailed. It got closer, at a speed unfathomable in Phnom Penh- the roads being more congested than an American trucker's arteries. Mao Tse Toung Blvd, the road that the siren was coming from, is one of the worst in the city. The siren's volume reached a climax as a monstrous motorcycle ridden by a stone faced policeman barreled into the intersection, followed closely by two pickup trucks filled with soldiers and a long line of brand new Mercedes S-Class cars, all with their headlights on. This is a big deal in Cambodia; it is genuinely illegal for regular folk to drive with their headlights on during the day*. This honour is reserved for government officials or, in this case, the President of China Hu Jintao. As the red flags with yellow stars fluttered on the sides of the speeding Mercedes I closed my eyes to appreciate the delicious aptness of the Chinese president speeding down a road in a foreign city named after Chairman Mao. 

To say that Mr. Hu and his wife were welcome in Phnom Penh is something of an understatement.

Once the motorcade had passed the motley crew of law enforcement/armed forces men simply stepped aside, ignoring the the multitude of traffic code violations amongst those of us stopped at the intersection. I found out later that day that my headlights had been on the whole time. And I didn't have my Cambodian license on me at the time. In late February the same combination of offences had cost me US$6. And resulted in an obese, sweaty policeman holding my hand for 5 minutes. But that's another story.


So I took off and over-revved up to 4th gear and blasted straight through a left turn only lane, only to be pulled over again by a stern, angry traffic policeman. I sighed and mentally counted my singles again. 


'You. Wait here,' he growled at me. I was done.


Another siren in the distance. Another motorcade. Another series of infractions ignored. That day, I felt invincible in the constant battle that is being a foreign motorcyclist on Cambodian roads. That was, until  the President of Myanmar decided that going anti-clockwise around a traffic circle just wasn't his thing and (presumably) ordered his motorcade to go the other way. Directly at me. I screamed and swerved out of the way of the lead motorcyclist before pulling over, parking my bike and breathing deeply for a while. 


Since then, all my journeys by motorbike have been extended by almost double, as the constant stream of important people (and one absurdly well protected South Korean school group) stop traffic around the city. 


Why can't they play someplace else?

The hog. 110ccs of law abiding fun.

* It's worth noting, however, that there is no law against operating a motor vehicle without headlights at night.

Milk was a bad choice

I sped into the convenience store parking lot in fourth gear at 95 kilometers an hour and screeched to a halt centimeters from a guard rail. Leaping off the bike, I thrust my backpack at Elliot, my terrified pillion passenger, and sprinted through the swinging glass doors emblazoned with 'Lucky 7 Supermarket' in English and Khmer. I made a bee line for a cooler at the back of the store, all the while roaring like a wounded circus animal.


You can get almost anything here in Phnom Penh. Every type of liquor imaginable. Pirated textbooks. Bush meat. Substandard English education from a moronic Australian with a beard. Fake petrol. One hundred percent pure Colombian cocaine ladies and gentlemen. Disco shit. Assault rifles. Hit by a speeding U.S. embassy Escalade SUV. Mature duck eggs for live consumption. AIDS.


Everything except dairy products. Short of risking life and limb on Monivong Boulevard to the absurdly expensive Soriya Supermarket, a dairy addict such as yours truly finds himself merely dreaming of cheese, flavoured milk and fruit yoghourt. Or any yoghourt for that matter. Is that even how you spell yoghourt?


Take this situation, teach a class focussed on the humble cow and allow your students to convince you that Lucky 7 Supermarket has a dairy cabinet. Soon you'll be careering up the aisles screaming 'Miiiiiiiiiiiiilllllllllllllllllk' while the staff shake with fear. Just as I was.


A few minutes and US$4 later I sat astride my bike and cracked the seal of my bottle of imported Thai milk. It was sweet and thin. But it was milk. Barely. 


Back at home, sipping the last of the milk I allowed myself a brief smile. Before my digestive system packed up and headed for the door. I hastily scribbled a note on the milk, literally threw it in the fridge and sprinted upstairs to my bathroom. Where I stayed for the rest of the evening.

Milk was a bad choice.