Preserve a patchyderm, spew on a dog

By the third time I had spewed over the railing and onto one of the homestay family's dogs, I knew something was gastronomically wrong. Well into my third month in SE Asia and in the middle of a weeklong volunteer project with The Elephant Nature Park out of Chiang Mai, Thailand, I finally came down with the fabled traveler's tummy.

A half day's drive on serpentine roads from acceptable medical facilities and hundreds and hundreds of kilometers from where I started, I was immensely grateful for the insta-friends of The Journey to Freedom and Cheryl's familiar face - even if I barely saw her between visits to the squat toilets to purge my other end.




(At the Park on night one)


(Walking a family)


(Three-month-old twins! Only the third known pair in Thailand)


(Buffs and scenery on second walk)


(Just down the road from our homestay)


(Cheryl on The Creek Crawl)


(Our translator, pseudo guide, sous chef, entertainment)


(The village came out to see us off)


(Clearly keen for a fella, Cheryl made me a man)

Booting Nam

Sewer foot upon arrival in Hanoi. Cankles from the Mekong Delta. Vietnam slowly and unexpectedly won me over despite being rough on my feet.

The natural beauty of Halong Bay and Sapa in the north, the warmth of (most) of the locals and the ever constant hilarity of fellow travelers.


(View from massive cave)


(View from top of hill climb)


(It's blurry because I'm kayaking so fast, not because the elder Israeli woman taking the photo is new to digital cameras)


(Sunset in the Bay)


(Sapa's rice terraces)

There were the gender-coordinated ponchoed family at the My Son ruins outside Hoi An.


(Blue is for boys and pink for girls)

The Norwegian couple who insisted on picking up my Tiger tab. And the trio of insanely gorgeous fellas at Chrissy whose passports spanned Japan, Israel and the U.K.

My favourite touching moment tragically wasn't with one of them - menstruation's a bitch - but when a nationality-undefined Asian who upon spotting my Mekong moz swollen foot dashed off and returned with a green mystery medicine to soothe the itch.



Tomorrow I'm flying out of Saigon to Phuket, Thailand to meet a teacher friend from Chetwynd. Wow, am I ready for a familiar face!

Flashmaster2000

In the last 36 hours, I have flashed six different women two different times.

The first was after I climbed off a nearly sleepless night train from Sapa, north Nam and forced myself into the lockless shower in my girls dorm. Not paying attention as I rinsed shampoo out to the "This is the shower stall" from the staff member showing new arrivals the room, three sets of eyes were on my naked form. Surprised and too tired to bother covering up, all four of us just stood there shocked.

The second time was last night when I went for a massage. Unlike western massage studios or even other massage rooms/curtains elsewhere in SE Asia, myself and a woman I just met downstairs were told to strip down to our undies - with three others in the room.

Mind the mines in Phonsavan

The Plain of Jars outside Phonsavan, Laos was one of the eeriest sites I visited in Laos. Lying just below the surface is an untold number of unexploded ordinances (UXOs) and these are still killing and injuring the Laos people years and years after the Secret War.


(Recovered UXOs)


(Crater from bombs)


(Red is dead. Stay within the white markers and it's unlikely you'll get blown up.)


(Site 1)


(Site 1)


(View from Site 1)


(Site 2)


(Site 2)


(Russian Tank)


(Farm constructed with bombs)

After the Plain of Jars tour, I went to Hmong New Year celebrations with two new friends. Here's some bumper car action.

Don't get hurt in Laos, they'll chop your leg off

"It's the buffalo whisper," travel companion Jenny appropriately said quietly pointing to a middle-aged, sun-bleached blonde man, who tens and tens of minutes before was in the Nam Song tripping his nuts off on an untold cocktail of drugs and lao lao and communicating with a herd of massive water buffalo.

This, a few inebriated slips and tell-tale crutches and bandaged ankles in town were miraculously all we witnessed while passing through Vang Vieng, Laos, a town made over into a backpacker destination for its tubing and renowned for its scale of partying, death and drugs.

Accidents are also very frequent.

Two weeks before my first lap through VV, a tuber died after hitting the bottom of the river after plunging face first from a slide. A few days before my second visit, a girl broke her leg in six places. Since Laos lacks adequate or any, really, decent hospitals, her leg wasn't set and placed in a cast, but amputated above the highest break.

The stories, rumours and quickly issued warnings about the river's appetite for turned ankles, broken bones and lives lost too early were sobering reminders that too much fun is possible and excess is capable of extinguishing.

Gemma, Jenny and I made a sober pact that we were to mind one another and absolutely not allow each other onto the dodgy swinging trapeze, crudely engineered flying fox or fourth-grade-science-project slides.

Learning upon arrival at the launching point that tubes had to be hired from the cartel in town, we were limited to stopping at makeshift bars we could walk to. This didn't prove to be a problem as we quickly found ourselves at the bottom of another lao lao bucket and not an early grave on the Nam Song,

"I don't know where I'm going, but I know what I've lost" Joel Plasket

I'm developing an insecurity complex about my invented boyfriend. Invented to ward off advances from locals claiming to have a preference for big (read: tall) western women, they're perplexed why he isn't accompanying me.

"He has to work," I offer.

"Maybe he don't really love you," is a common response. "Maybe he think you too fat," one was bold enough to suggest.

When probed for further information about him, it's never the same man twice. There was Lorn, a 30-year-old organic farmer. Richard, a 40-year-old playing the markets with more money than he knew what to do with. A gracefully aging ski bum. A young snappy forester from down east. A workaholic geologist learning Portuguese.

I have borrowed snippets from my favourite former fellas to casually and temporarily construct an as-needed relationship. As I quickly smile and pay tribute to what and who was, it's a sobering reminder of one of the costs of snowbirding at 25.

Loss of romantic relationships is where the grieving only begins. Away for Christmas, Easter, Thanksgiving with a dynamic, extended-definition of family that swells and contracts holiday to holiday, I cheat myself out of deeper relationships on the genetic front.

What used to be hours and hours of gossip, concert going, hoe toes with my girlfriends and uni pub nights that seemingly never ended has now been reduced to an insufficient lunch, drink, coffee between my work and travel laps.

Maybe that comfortable ease of daily life can't be regained over the short course of a meal, or an evening of mindless TV watching, or even an all-night gab sesh with the girls over too many bottles of wine. But, I'll still continue to make the time and effort for these friends and family that make returning to where I started so easy.

Cambodia photos so far

(Tuk tuk with Kieren and Roz)


(This is a shit photo, but I still really like it)


(On boardwalk to one of the temples)


(Kieren taking a photo)


(Total cheese, but worth the $1)


(Part of the Lady Temple)


(A bit naughty, eh?)


(Hand cut grass at Angkor Wat)


(Boat journey to Battambang)


(Moto tour around Battambang)


(Bamboo railroad)


(My destination. Killing cave and temples on top)


(Cambodian flora)


(Monkeys playing on my walk down)


(Elephants!)


(Swimming hole in Ream National Park near Sihanoukville)


(View from lookout in Ream)