Photos of the slow boat trip from Luang Prabang to Houay Xai. For various reasons, these didn't make it into the main Laos blog, but I didn't want you to miss out... [View Full Entry]

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Laos: the most bombed country in the world. The forgotten victim of a war misleadingly known in the West as the Vietnam War, but more accurately described as the Indochinese War. Bombed to hell and left there by US forces intent on cutting off Ho Chi Minh and his North Vietnamese communist forces from their supply lines, despite the country being internationally recognised as neutral in the neighbouring conflict. A legacy from which the country has yet to escape, unexploded ordinance still contaminating more than half its land and killing hundreds annually. Yet whose people who could not [View Full Entry]

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Amazingly, there is more to Siem Reap than simply its proximity to the Angkor ruins, although that fact is driving its extraordinary expansion. This town must have more brand new hotels per square inch, particularly (thankfully) on the outskirts, than anywhere else I've ever visited. To put this in context, there's a banner over the main road out of town towards the Angkor area thanking the two million tourists who visited Cambodia last year - i.e., the equivalent of 13% of the country's population - and I'm willing to bet that 99.99% of them came to Siem Reap. This also explains [View Full Entry]

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You know the expressions, "breathtaking" and "it took my breath away"? Well, this did. Literally. As Huow, our tuktuk driver, drove us along the moat that partially surrounds Angkor Wat, the temple’s front aspect and distinctive towers suddenly came into view. There was a sharp intake of breath. Sure, I’d seen a gazillion photographs and representations of Angkor Wat - you can’t spend two minutes in Cambodia without doing so - but nothing I’d seen could begin to convey the sheer power and mystery of these buildings that have stood here for nearly a millenni [View Full Entry]

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Cambodia. "Killing fields". The immediate sequitur: the institutionalised killing perpetrated by the Khmer Rouge in the 1970s is one of my earliest memories of international news, and the association is still tremendously strong. Even my mother asked if the country was “safe” when I told her my travel plans for the first weeks of this year. When I reached Phnom Penh, I caught myself wondering if I actually wanted to go to the Genocide Museum at Tuol Sleng, otherwise known now as S-21, the former secondary school that, overnight, became an interrogation centre for anyon [View Full Entry]

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Indigestion. Experience overload. Hey, I'm not not complaining! My three weeks in south-east Asia - Cambodia and Laos, with overnight stops in Kuala Lumpur - earlier this month were simply stunning. It's a while since I've been somewhere that seemed initially so "foreign", so different. That has so much history, both ancient and remarkable, and recent and horrific. Where the people are so charming, and still seemingly a little naive about the tourists who are becoming the mainstay of their economies. Where there is so much to see and to do, yet where internal transport is still [View Full Entry]

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I decided to visit this southern Rajasthani city, aptly known as “the Venice of the East”, en route from Mumbai and Delhi, when I first heard of its picturesque-ness: its lakeside setting, surrounding mountains and panoply of palaces, which include the Lake Palace made famous in “Octopussy”. After two weeks relaxing in Goa, this was a return to Serious Travelling, back on my own, and I loved it. Travelling alone has its disadvantages, but, for me, these are largely superseded by its advantages. Not only is my time is absolutely my own - allowing me what a friend cal [View Full Entry]

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No, this wasn’t the effect of any dodgy stuff that I might have smoked/drunk/eaten, but exactly what happened when I was body-surfing waves off Palolem beach in Goa one day last week. And it seemed like a fun title for a blog (thanks, David!). But to back up a bit. Goa… the Costa del Sol of India. Brit package holidays with a touch of the exotic. Hippy heaven. Kathmandu-by-the-sea. It wasn’t, to be honest, high up on my Top Ten As-Yet-Unvisited Places In India, but it was a happy compromise reached to meet the goals of somewhere new to explore and [View Full Entry]

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…of Bollywood glitz and burka-clad women…. of Louis Vuitton and the barefoot woman selling her few things from a cloth spread out on the pavement…. of businessmen and lepers…. of high rises and beaches…. of 500 AD cave temples and twenty-first century skyscrapers…. of McDonalds and street-vendors…. of posh cars and cows in the road…. of humidity-enhanced street smells and a welcome sea breeze. “In India, rich means too rich; poor means too poor”. This, the wisdom of “Mr Mac”, my first day’s guide, can b [View Full Entry]

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Before I write further, a huge THANK YOU to all my long-suffering UK-based friends and relations who generously put their hands in their pockets to raise funds for an elephant collar at extremely short notice in response to nothing more personal than a couple of round-robin emails. And a big THANK YOU too to those who took the trouble to write and - completely unnecessarily - explain why you would not be contributing. For much of this year, I had known that Keith Leggett, the lead scientist in the northwestern Namibian desert-dwelling elephant project, with whom I have been working on [View Full Entry]

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