The thing is, there are no fat backpackers. Tans, dreadlocks, hardened torsos, the occasional symbolic tatt, chain smokers ... Khao San Road is seething with these characters. Fisherman's pants, leather necklaces with sharks tooth or similar, rip off brand name t-shirts, thongs (or flip flops ... depending where you're from!), headbands, masses of facial hair... Famously depicted in the movie 'the beach' - Khao San Rd is a heaving backpacker bottleneck. 24 hour debauchery. I bump into fellow travellers I've previously met along the way - in Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia. Bright lights mak [View Full Entry]

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Singapore - the Canberra of SE Asia - was never going to be a tourist stop. The main agenda was to visit my dear friends from Oz - Donna and Scott - working there since June. It also provided a great opportunity to do laundry, restock supplies and relax in the comfort of a ritzy expat apartment with pool. Quite a departure from the backpacking world! After Vietnam, Singapore was very Western. Clean, green and pristine. It dealt me a terrible case of reverse culture shock. Money has come to Singapore making it a shopping mecca of glass and steel shopping [View Full Entry]

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Vietnam was all sunburn, mozzie bites and sand in my hair. I wasn’t convinced I’d have time to make it to Vietnam - but thanks to some heavy duty 12 hour slogs on buses and a time saving flight from Vientiane, Laos to Phnom Penh, Cambodia - I managed to muster up a respectable ten days. Enough for some long overdue beach action in the south with my good friend Germaine - covering off Ho Chi Minh City, Nha Trang and Mui Ne (the latter both coastal hotspots). After Cambodia, Ho Chi Minh City was a thriving metropolis. Shops operated from [View Full Entry]

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Cambodia and its seething mass of motorcycle bandits, filthy beggar children, horrific history and desperate poverty is a hard country to love. Until the gorgeous grinning children and resilience of it's Khmer survivors gets under your skin. Then there's Angkor Wat. No pictures or descriptions will ever do Angkor Wat's plethora of jaw dropping temples justice - it's pure and simple goose bump material. Arriving in Phnom Penh, it was immediately apparent that Cambodia is a far poorer country than its neighbours. Children with bare feet wander the backpacker district selling rip off [View Full Entry]

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I knew I’d love Laos, even before I got there. I wasn’t disappointed. Quite simply, it’s combination of placid, often cheeky locals, untouched natural beauty and lazy lack of commercialism makes it unforgettable. Pronounced ‘Lao’, but spelt ‘Laos’ owing to a French spelling error - tourism is a very new concept here. Within minutes of arriving in Huay Qai - Laos border town (just a short boat ride across the Mekong from Chiang Khong, Thailand) I receive a marriage proposal. Lan is a good foot shorter than me, has an irritating laugh, terrible jok [View Full Entry]

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Chiang Mai exuded charm and culture, instead of tack. Like the night market stalls selling artwork, jewellery, lanterns and fisherman pants, instead of ugly shopping complexes. Many fellow backpackers were in Chiang Mai to do courses in massage, meditation and cooking. Others were there for the delightfully slow pace, exceptional food, Buddhist influence (more than 300 temples within the old city) and hippy lifestyle. Becs, a friend I’d met doing TEFL in Melbourne, was staying in Chiang Mai - so I went to join her at Spicy Thai Backpackers. A two-storey house, turned boutique backp [View Full Entry]

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The ferry to Penang is all cockroaches, vomit and karaoke - perhaps not an unusual combination for South East Asia?! It's also stinking hot. I'm grateful for my gut of steel and for my blocked nose. I'm even more grateful for my sense of humour! My destination, Penang, the so called 'pearl of the Orient' was first settled by the British back in 1786 and prospered as a major trading hub of the east - attracting many Chinese merchants to the area. When I arrive in Georgetown, Penang's capital, I quickly realize this isn't your garden variety SE Asian Island. There's [View Full Entry]

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Langkawi hosts between 99 and 104 islands - depending on who you talk to and whether the tide is up or down. It's on the west coast of Malaysia, just south of the Thai border. Reminiscent of Thailand - but quieter, lazier and unspoiled by pushy touts peddling 'same same' t-shirts. Pantai Cenang, Langkawi's gorgeous main beach, features a wide strip of beach, with sand like cocaine (ironic in a country where drugs are a guaranteed death penalty) and fabulous palm trees overflowing with coconuts. There's one main road, with a strip of shops, budget hotels and restaurants which spill out [View Full Entry]

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I start my trip in Kuala Lumpur on the back of a dirt cheap Jetstar flight. With the excitement of my leaving drinks and other associated festivities - there'd been no time to even open the guidebook. I arrive in town with a picture of the Petronas twin towers in my head and expectations of a deliciously quaint and seedy Chinatown. It's late evening when I drag my pack onto a couple of trains, then sweat my way across Chinatown to one of the cheapest hostels in the book - $4 a night. Gold. Making out the hostel desk across a [View Full Entry]

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It's been one manic month. Vacating my apartment in Port Melbourne and moving back to the family home in the burbs, travel vacs, training my replacement at work, a market stall to sell my clothes, TEFL course locked and loaded, farewell drinks ... So now I'm off! What's the plan? How long will I be gone? What will I do for money, for work? So many questions... The plan is to backpack SE Asia - Malaysia, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia ... and Vietnam if I have time. Then I'm off to India (via a visit to my good friends Donna & Scott [View Full Entry]

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