himynameis

Well, yes, they do. But that isn't the subject of this blog. Friends have been asking me to do a presentation of my last year of travel. Instead, I offer them this movie of my two months on a motorbike from Yunnan across Sichuan, Qinghai and Gansu to Xinjiang. Kunming to Kashgar and all points in between. 12,000km on a red machine. Trials and tribulations, despair and delight. In the end I sold the bugger in Kashgar and it went on to reach Beijing, a cool 8,000 km away. ... read more

Friday noon. There I am, lying in bed, netbook in my lap, surfing and waiting for the clouds to clear. No use getting up and heading for the woods if it's overcast. The lighting conditions do not favour wildlife photography today, all I'd get is a fuzzy mess. It's a wolf, I swear! And that's a bear! Yeah, right, if you say so... I occasionally glance out the window and across the balcony to see if the sky has cleared. Nope. No such luck. Suddenly, some brown specks enter my field of vision. I blink to make sure my eyes aren't deceiving me. I jump up, attach my canon of a lens to the Rebel, assume stealth mode and budge the window ajar. The flecks wince. Are they supposed to do that? I pull the zoom ... read more

My first CouchSurfing account had been hit and miss. Admitedly, I'd set it up to find free accommodation in expensive places so I made it squeaky clean and 100% real. I met a few colourful characters and we had some memorable times but I couldn't escape the feeling that people weren't responding to my e-mails because of my origin. When a fellow CouchSurfer went out of control and I had to cancel my account to avoid them, I wasn't thinking of coming back any time soon. Eventually the situation calmed down and I had the choice of reopening a new account with my real details or with some bogus ones. I did both. One is Jack Vaughn, an Aussie who likes to have fun. His goal in life is to drink as much beer as humanly ... read more

Gangs of cockatoos fill the air. Rainbow lorikeets cavort amongst the trees. But in the distance, planes take off and land from six to midnight. An assortment of cranes across the bay mar the view of Sydney Tower and the city and an oil tanker lies where the Endeavour once anchored. Much has changed since Captain James Cook first arrived here 240 years ago. Me? I came here back in 1991. Nine months of hell. A sulphur-crested cockatoo has just landed on the araucaria that shades me. It stares. It glares. It shrieks. Just as I mention its presence to my travel buddy Rune, it lifts its tail and craps a mere metre from my feet then flies away. A seemingly perfect upper middle-class suburban existence flawed by the Anglo-Saxon school system. Geeks and goons. Nerds ... read more

There we were, stomachs growling. We were staying with Mel and Sharyn, friends R. had made a couple of months earlier in Laos and we didn't want to inconvenience them when they offered to make dinner. Hopping into the old Ford Falcon we had rented, we made our way north through suburbia towards the nearest shopping centre. The brights lights of a Maccas drew us like a moth. The main entrance was locked and the drive through was littered with loutish teenagers. Loud and brash with a hint of drunk. As we edged towards the pick-up counter a pimple faced youth, whose foot I thought we may have run over turns to us and asks how we're doing. Cool, mate, I reply. Nice, says R... Nice and 'smüüt'. I thought I'd shit myself from laughter. Neither ... read more

As I push through the swamp, wary of snakes and spiders, I brush against a palm tree. Centimetre long red ants in their tens come rushing out and attack me, biting all over. Their acid enters my skin and a pain much like an electrical current pulsates through my body. I crush them with my open palms but more come to take their place. I drop my guard and waddle through the knee deep water and mud as fast as I humanly can to the dry ground up ahead. I clamber over a toppled section of a barbed wire fence, slide the backpack off of my shoulders, dispose of my shirt and trousers and jump about, swatting away my attackers. Native American dance over, I stand there and rethink the reasons for coming here. Ten days ... read more