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. 

Into the Heart of Let Downs

'So, ready to go?'


I gulped and gingerly placed the last bite of a greasy cheeseburger in my mouth. It was 2.30am. We were sitting on plastic chairs at a low table on the footpath of Street 51, taking a break from the evening to sample the local late night fare. A US$2 cheeseburger hit the spot pretty well, but the remainder of the evening beckoned.


I cast my mind back to our Safety and Security in Phnom Penh induction session earlier that day. 'Whatever you do,' an Australian expat named Rod had told us,' never EVER go to Street 51 after dark.' Check. 'And if you do go there, don't hang out on the street itself,' he continued. Check again. 'And I can't emphasis enough how important it is that you do not, under any circumstances, go to Heart of Darkness.' 


A few of us had heard of the infamous Phnom Penh nightlife institution where rich Khmer youth regularly kicked the living shit out of complete strangers for fun. Backed by their heavily armed bodyguards, these kids saw committing brutal violence as a kind of rite of passage. We'd also heard that the club was notorious for gunfights in which multiple participants emptied automatic weapons from the club's upstairs terrace into their victims on the exposed dance floor below. It was one seriously fucked up place. Which, before I knew it, we were in line to enter. Check. Uh-oh.

I was nervous. I began to wonder which moments would constitute my life and flash before my eyes. I regretted not writing my blood type on my shoes. Did life insurance cover nightclub war zones?


At the head of the queue two security guards patted me down. I had learnt some time ago that this was for the protection of the aforementioned rich kids and their bodyguards who always entered unsearched. A large sign above the door advised that firearms could be checked at the coat room for US$3.


Heart of Darkness literally lived up to its name. I struggled to see anything as my hearing was assaulted by absurdly loud techno music. Feeling my way around the walls I climbed some stairs for a better vantage point from which to observe the club. My eyes adjusted to the light to reveal ...


... a smattering of male tourists in thongs and football jerseys. Drinking Angkor beer from large bottles. And looking decidedly un-murdered. The myth began to deflate. And with it my fear. Roaming the club revealed that the only hardy souls braving the depths of hell were bored Khmer working girls and those tourists who classified 'dressing up' as wearing a jersey with a number on the back. 


We hightailed it out of there, in search of a place where we might realistically be shot at. Because here in Phnom Penh, safety is just boring.

An eye opening plate of curry

So there I was, in central Hong Kong, about to greedily inhale another mouthful of unbelievably authentic Indian food when the aptness city's marketing tagline 'Asia's World City' hit me in the face like a hidden chilli in chana dahl.


I was sitting in one of the many nameless Indian restaurants in the cramped, light- and air-less labyrinth of small shops that is Kowloon's infamous Chungking Mansions. To get to it I'd fought my way through swarms of touts offering 'Suit, buddy?', 'Money change, buddy?',  'Hostel, buddy?' or 'Indian food, buddy?'. A random Indian guy who wasn't a tout eventually recommended this place. When I eventually found it, I ordered food in Hindi - none of the staff spoke any English. The food came, and may as well have been flown in from Bombay; it was incredible.

But I digress. One table over two enormous Ugandan men were talking with an Indian guy who spoke impeccable, Canadian-accented English. Their table was crammed with all manner of meat and biryani dishes and their conversation was hushed and serious.


Meanwhile, two Swedish guys in matching suits tapped earnestly on the keyboards of their MacBook Pros.  They were creating a slide deck. For what purpose, I wasn't sure - there was nowhere near enough room for a projector in this place. They eventually packed their things and marched off in single file.


Around us a United Nations of South Asian and Chinese men scurried about with stacks of goods - among them, an estimated 20% of all the mobile phones to be sold on the African continent in the coming year. People walked by eating doner kebabs, garlic naan, noodles and pizza. The collision of cultures was like nothing I had ever seen before. In a place which I had long regarded as the boring cousin of major Asian hubs.


The Ugandan/Indian table took a break from business talk. The Ugandans switched to French to converse between themselves whilst the Indian guy fielded a heated business call in ... spanish? I frowned, mid bite and promptly bit my cheek. That can't be right. Why would an Indian guy ... speak spanish? I continued to listen surreptitiously. Eventually the Indian guy waved his hands - his fingertips missing the ceiling fan by centimeters - and shouted 'mui importante!' which pretty much settled the issue once and for all.


The morning in Hong Kong yielded two soakings in the rain, one plate of phenomenally good food and one moment of discovery. Not bad for a morning's work.

Beginnings. Or 'why I started a blog.'

I sat down, rubbed my hands together and took a deep breath. Slowly, and deliberately I placed my hands in typing position on the keyboard as if beginning some sort of religious ceremony handed down through generations. Opening my eyes from an extended, choreographed blink, which I did for dramatic affect, I leaned toward the screen and …

… realized that I haven’t the slightest idea as to how to start a blog post. I was puzzled by more than just the thought you open with – I wasn’t even sure what the first word of the post should be. Hi? It’s not a letter. Welcome? Or a restaurant. Ever since bloggers became legitimate news sources, celebrities and political prisoners I had presumed that blogging was somewhat akin to breathing; everyone knew how to do it. More or less. Yet here I was stumped before writing a single word. But that’s a bridge I’ll cross at a later stage. This post has, after all, already commenced.

So, why a blog? In one week I leave for a year long, round the world trip and, as anyone who knows someone who has taken a gap year will appreciate, I cannot wait to start gasbagging about it. And with the advent of the internet, I don’t even have to wait til I get home. Plus I don’t have to suffer the indignity of being told to shut up. But there’s something in it for you too, dear reader. You see, I have a tendency to make god awful life choices. Not insignificant stuff like giving to beggars and cycling at night; I’m talking sheer poorly-thought-out idiocy which, in certain situations often causes complete strangers to yell out ‘I told you so.’ But don’t just take my word for it; have a read of this anecdote.  I call it, The Egg.

January 2010

Somewhere between Varanasi and Gaya, Uttar Pradesh, India.

Train #12623 NDLS Rewa Express. Coach D7, berth 36.

11.33pm

Empty trains make a lot of noise. Especially as they hurtle headlong into the inky black night of presumably electricity-free Uttar Pradesh. Evin, Lucy and I sat on the one berth, freezing. Around us were 6 other foreigners catching what was meant to be the morning train to Gaya to see the Dalai Lama. Except the train was delayed, and several hours later became the graveyard train. Which departed with only us aboard. As the most Indian person in our rag tag bunch, all eyes were on me to ensure our safe conveyance to Gaya. And all I could think about was my stomach. I was hungry. The train was curiously devoid of any itinerant salespeople normally abundant on almost every train on the continent.

An Indian man carrying a bucket climbed aboard at a stop so out-of-the-way it didn’t have a sign. Or a platform. He looked like he’d never been in shade and was weathered like an old baseball glove. His features were sharp and evil in the yellow glow of the train lights. He placed the bucket roughly on the compartment floor and leered at us. I was terrified. My stomach growled.

‘Egg!’ he suddenly yelled. We all jumped and soon after exchanged confused glances. What could he possibly mean? The man reached into the bucket and whipped out a stained hard boiled egg. ‘Egg!’ he screamed again. We understood – he was an egg salesman. Who just happened to be insane.

I decided to evaluate the merits of eating an egg. I needed my wits about me, I was low on energy and, well, if I didn’t I was pretty sure my stomach would leap out of my body and consume it for me. So I indicated to the man, still crouched on his haunches on the floor glowering at us, that I would like an egg. Please.

He fished an egg out of his bucket and in one swift motion, cracked the shell on the ladder leading to the top bunk. Specifically, he cracked the egg, which I would soon be putting in my mouth, on the part of the ladder where one places their foot. Its just the shell, its still good, my mind chanted. Next, he used a grimy black fingernail to peel the cracked shell from the egg.  I winced each time he gripped and rotated the egg. My mind was out of ideas. Surely, the torture had to stop here. Or was it just beginning? Removing a rusty straight razor from somewhere in the bucket, the man sliced the egg – still in his palm- into two pieces and dropped the razor on the floor. He rummaged around the train for a scrap of newspaper and placed the two pieces of egg in it. He then sprinkled them with a spice mixture he had extracted with a grubby thumb and forefinger from his back pocket. Handing the heaving cess pool of bacteria to me, he accepted my ten rupee note and stomped off down the carriage.

Everyone stared open mouthed as I pondered what to do next. The egg might kill me, but it was definitely the last item of food I’d have a chance to eat for the foreseeable future.   It might be my last meal for a while, or my last meal ever. There was only one choice.

I ate the egg.

The decision to eat the aforementioned egg, and many others like it, is the very reason you should follow this blog. This year will entail all manner of stupidity – and it’s already started. From organizing a volunteer stint in Cambodia which spans Phnom Penh’s excruciatingly hot summer to attempting to walk the Inca trail at the height of Peru’s rainy season, I seem to have set myself up for all manner of challenges. And in following this blog you can observe me meet (fail at) them.

All the hilarity, none of the mess. Enjoy.