The motorbike wobbled protestingly as we involuntarily headed for the nearest tree. "Go faster!" said the exuberant bundle of ballast perched precariously behind me. At 82, my uncle was the oldest surviving member of my family and seemed keen to end his innings right there and then. "Not on my watch, uncle", I yelled back, wondering how I would explain this to my parents. Travelling through Laos, relatives I’ve never even heard of have emerged from the countryside like kangaroos at dusk. It was a most curious feeling meeting my uncle (a spitting image of my own father), and seeing how [View Full Entry]

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Like so many times before, this war was waged in the most beautiful of places, on the most peaceful of peoples. This otherwise idyllic place is Muang Ngoi Neua, a small one-street village nestled amongst spectacular karst mountains, where one can hear no cars. No motorbikes, no telephones. The serene Nam Ou river isolates this peninsula from the rest of northern Laos and most everyone likes it this way. On a mud bank neatly bisecting the river, two groups of baby-faced men nervously faced off in the afternoon sun. In the background, their grim minions worked furiously, nails digging deeply into [View Full Entry]

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It all began very much like a Bruce Lee film should. A late afternoon sun was emerging, doing its best to protest the wet season. On a rustic wooden ferry, I stood silently at the bow, watching the turbid waters of the Mekong River race the storm clouds that were fleeing in a southerly direction above. Between the river and the sky, the banks of Laos held defiantly still as our vessel struggled to maintain a steady course. Uniformed officers waited on the shore, mirroring my posture and my silence until at 1630 on 29 August 2005, I stepped on Lao [View Full Entry]

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One can achieve a lot. Everything took that long, at least in my personal experience. The bus ride to Mandalay. The bus ride to Bagan. The bus ride to Inle Lake. The passage of a less-than-perfectly-fresh lassi through my digestive tract. I'm now in Chiang Mai, catching up with a good friend over equally good food. For the first time in nearly three decades, I'm going to visit my country of origin tomorrow. I wonder how people will treat me. Wish me luck dudes... "If you're looking for an unmarked place.... There is no such place." - Augie March [View Full Entry]

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Our eyes met and the clouds parted. Like a choreographed dance, she moved towards me and I took a step back, our bodies in perfect unison. She reached for my breast but I turned away, not tonight. This one wasn't going to have me easily this night. A cry from the crowd and my gaze was averted. She stepped in and pinned the paper butterfly to my shirt "for good luck." "I give you present, now you give me present", she cried triumphantly, "500 kyat". Sighing, I picked up the soccerball and returned to the game... This is life in Myanmar, [View Full Entry]

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I enthusiastically patted the seat next to me, grunted reassuringly and nodded as eagerly as I could, hoping desperately that this act alone would put off anyone thinking about sitting next to such an unsavoury character... Now I wouldn't normally be this ungracious but I was still recovering from the previous bus ride, where my co-seatee had intermittently leant over me, spitting half of his betelnut juice out of the window, and the other half in my lap. Ignoring my contained revulsion, the scarlet-mouthed bandit dropped his duffel bag on the floor and hopped nonchalantly off the bus at the [View Full Entry]

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1. Enter on a schmick-looking Bangkok Airways flight carrying only 16 people. Look miffed given that one only has six rows to oneself. 2. Make disapproving tutt tutt noises at fellow travellers having visa issues and holding up the queue of two. 3. When accosted by touts and money changers, confound them by acting as an ambassador of goodwill, smiling and replying "yes, thank you, I've packed my white bikini". 4. In the process, fail to notice worried-looking Burmese driver holding up sign with one's name on it. 5. Walk daintily past sweating taxi drivers gesticulating in rusting Datsun taxis and [View Full Entry]

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Yay, I'm back in Bangers. Sorry mum, I meant Krung Thep - the city of angels. Only I must have been doing something wrong (like staying near Khao San Road again) because almost everyone I've met so far has been dodgy as hell, if somewhat entertaining. In the last 24 hours I have been mistaken as a Japanese tourist by an Isaan taxi driver, sampled every permutation of fruit shake possible with a German landscape architect, lectured loudly in public by an enthusiastic Israeli art photographer, stretched by a Thai masseuse who confided that she had just narrowly avoided being sold [View Full Entry]

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