The Mekong Delta I am in love with the Mekong, and as a part of my travels I want to see it in as many places as I can. So far I’ve traced its course from Phnom Penh north to Chiang Khong in Thailand, and while in Saigon it was imperative that I see it at its mouth. Thus began my second day tour out of HCMC. Of course, in my usual style it was quite an effort to raise myself from bed in time to catch the bus and I spent the entire journey south asleep (much to the annoyance [View Full Entry]

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How Fast is That? The bus was empty, well relatively so. In terms of Vietnamese busses it was as empty as they come, only 6 or perhaps 7 of us were travelling south from Nha Trang. The most likely explanation for the large discrepancy between the capacity of the bus and the actual usage is the fact that we had departed at the unholy hour of 7:30am and most people in Nha Trang, including yours truly, could never comfortably wake up at that time. I can not precisely say when I went to sleep, only that it was well past the [View Full Entry]

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Decisions, Regrets and Hangovers What did you do today? I bet it was more pleasant than what I did, well I certainly hope it was for your sake. Let me explain. As I have traveled around I have noticed that there are certain decisions, important decisions, which you should never entrust to some individuals. For example, you should never let my friend Alex choose a restaurant for dinner as you will either end up eating raw two minute noodles from a travel agent or doing even less enjoyable things with your toilet later that night. Today I found my own weakness, [View Full Entry]

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Following a Guidebook to Hoi An When you can get you head around the names of places in Asia things become easy. Before that however, you can get into a lot of trouble. The differences between Hoi An and Hanoi; Da Nang, Ao Nang and Dalat; Dong Hai and Dong Ha might seem linguistically miniscule but when you look at them on a map you realise that a small mistake in pronunciation might result in a bus taking you thousands of kilometers away from where you want to be. This problem was especially troubling for me when I was in Hue [View Full Entry]

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To Heaven and Hue There are two ways to get from Vientiane to southern Vietnam; one is the sensible tourist oriented trip where they sort everything out for you and take you through an easily accessible border-crossing near Hue. The other is what I chose to do and involves a lot more effort, heartache and pain while providing the possibility of being cheaper. Sometimes thrift can really get you in trouble I have found. To get the trip underway I had to catch one of those poky little local buses from the southern bus station in Vientiane and so as to [View Full Entry]

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Vientiane: Sleepy Capital of a Sleepy Country “Would you like to go to the morning market?” someone asked, “Very cheap price”. This sudden onslaught of English caught me by surprise as for hours on end I had been surrounded by chatting, laughing and uncharacteristically loud locals on the bus. During the six hour transit from Tha Khek to Vientiane the peak of my conversational interaction had been to learn the “other” five numbers between one and ten in Lao (I had mastered one to five during my motorbiking adventure when paying for petrol but had never required more than 5,000 kip [View Full Entry]

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Pakse Comparatively speaking, Pakse is a metropolis in southern Laos; a veritable backpacker heaven. Well that was my first impression at least, an impression which gradually changed during the days I spent there. To start with, I chose a bad guesthouse. The bed was too short and not a great deal more comfortable than the floor, the communal showers were all broken, and to top it off the restaurant downstairs became ridiculously noisy at 6am every day. That aside though, I really did enjoy the town due to the fact that virtually every tourist in southern Laos spends a night or [View Full Entry]

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I apologise to you all for being so tardy in updating this journal; it has simply been too expensive to use the internet over the last two weeks. As such, I have a backlog of quasi-interesting stories for you to read (a good excuse to bludge at work, right?), and due to Pedro’s comments I shall try to keep them in chronological order where possible. Kratie Soon after Jeff’s departure from the holiday, Alex and I headed into northern Cambodia to the town of Kratie. I was under the impression that we would still be well within the Cambodian tourist loop [View Full Entry]

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Wednesday When I woke up this morning, I heard a disturbing sound. I said, when I woke up this morning, I heard a disturbing sound! The sound turned out to be Jeff, "Time to get up Matty, it's a quarter to six". Clearly, I went back to sleep rather prompty. On his second attempt Jeff did manage to stir me and against all better judgement I rose to face the day. The reason for this unforgivable wake up call was that Jeff had a bus to catch at six and I wanted to see him off. His return to Australia was [View Full Entry]

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I will not claim to be well traveled, as I am yet to see more than a sliver of the world. Nevertheless, I have started to notice patterns which emerge in the tourist's world. My thesis is this: tourists never visit the right places, we always visit the "tourist" places. The example which is glaring me in the face as I write is the small seaside town of Sihanoukville, a pleasant little place that reminds me of Harvey Bay in Queensland. We are staying in a rather pricey accommodation (due to the relative unavailability of triple rooms anywhere in the world) [View Full Entry]

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