It's a small, small world

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It’s true that then backpacking routes of South East Asia are well trodden. But bearing in mind there are hundreds of different possible ways in which to see the numerous countries, and in those countries thousands of places to stay we are still surprised to bump into Aussie Jared with the frequency with which we do.
We first encountered him at the Bangkok/ Cambodia border - he was in front of me in the immigration queue - but got sent to the back because he hadn’t filled in his Visa form correctly. We had planned to ask him and the British guy he was travelling with at that point to share a cab with us to Siem Reap, but by the time they eventually made it to the taxi office, we had already arranged to share with the Polish architects.
We bumped into him again at the halfway stop and later at our guesthouse, where it transpired he was also staying.
We stumbled across him again the night we went to see the ‘legendary’ sunset that never was. Him and Joe had cycled out there, and not being privvy to Plet’s super short-cut, had to take the long route up. They scrambled to the top of the hill just as darkness descended. We reassured them, quite honestly that they hadn’t missed anything as there hadn’t been much of a sunset anyway.
Most days we would stop and have a chat to Jared, and admire his fortitude as he took a push bike out to the temples - whilst we got exhausted just sitting in the back of the tuk tuk.
We had a good long chat with him the day before we left Siem Reap, and I wondered if we would bump into Jared in Phnom Penh, as he was following just a couple of days behind us.
As it turned out, we didn’t see Jared in Phnom Penh - we did however, bump into Joe, who he was still travelling with at this point, in the Russian Market. He was buying a pair of shorts that Mal had his eye on. Luckily there was another pair, so Mal parted with $5 went home happy.
I didn’t think we’d see Jared again, so it was with a little surprise, I spied a familiar ginger beard and vest combination out the corner of my eye as we were going over our schedule for the following days diving in the Scuba Nation office.
Jared was eyeing suspiciously the vivid pink motorbike that he had apparently hired for the day, and asking the guy from our guesthouse who had brought it to him, if it was available in a more ‘manly’ colour. In the end he agreed to take Jared off to find a more suitable vehicle - but not before we had confirmed that once again, we were all staying at the same guesthouse. This coincidence would seem a little less remarkable if either of the guesthouses had been in the usual guide books, but they weren’t. We had found Bou Savy by chance on the Internet, and had defaulted to Mochachai, as it was right next to (and recommended by) Scuba Nation - but only after we had trawled every guesthouse on the beach, only to discover that none had the two bungalows available that we needed when Nic and Gareth arrived. It would be of less note also, if Jared was a diver, as he could have received a similar recommendation. But he isn’t.
I had fully expected for Jared to become a familiar sight on our travels, as he was following a similar route along the coast of Cambodia, into Vietnam. However, at the time of writing we are seriously investigating a drastic detour from our original route - a week of diving and trekking in Borneo with Nic and Gareth whose itinerary it has been on for months.

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