Because 2 weeks of traveling isn’t enough
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“I think it’s a dog”
Relayed to us from a night-spotting trip in Cuc Phuong National Park, Guide: “I think it’s a dog.” Guide: “… or maybe a pig.” Guest: “Really? It sounds bigger…” Guide: “Maybe it’s a bear.”
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Made To Measure
Seemingly every town in Asia has a specialty handicraft from silk painting to embroidery to inlaid marble tables. We haven’t seen a shotglass in months (unfortunately for Cara’s kitsch collection). After 3 days of endless exposure, you swear you never want to see a miniature camel painting again. In the old quarter of Hoi An,…
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Same Same But Different
Spent 3 days motorbiking in the Central Highlands of Vietnam with the sons of coffee farmers. We went to the highlands to escape the heat and to immerse ourselves in hills of coffee. The surprising highlights of our trip quickly became mealtime with our drivers, “Rocky” and Loi. The first night after barrelling through a…
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Where you from?
This should come as no surprise. Internationally, George W. Bush is not a popular character, but despite our concerns everyone we’ve met is able to distinguish between Americans and the American government, at least long enough to extract our tourist dollars. We have been in Vietnam for a week. It is here, like everywhere, that…
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Roads Less Travelled
Cara was bitter. She was sick, stranded in the hotel room. Adam met Pirom, a clever 16 year old English student, who invited him for a Sunday visit in his family’s village. Adam consumed palm juice, palm wine, and ice cold beer. Adam ate mangoes, palm fruit, tamarind, and coconuts hand picked from their trees.…
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Dim Lights, Big City
We’re in Phnom Penh, the capital city of Cambodia, recovering from being in the dirty but welcoming countryside. With any luck our visas and passports will come through this evening for Vietnam and we’ll be on a boat down the Mekong river tomorrow morning. Time for a regional food update. Cambodia definitely has a simpler…
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4 Showers a Day
We are here in the middle of the dry season, and the ever-present rice paddies are a dull brown broken up only by colorful pagodas and sporadic spikes of palm trees. Pickup trucks overflowing with bushels of vegetables, bags of rice, suitcases, motorbikes, and as many people as can find a handhold are the standard…
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What is in these bottles? Answer: Gasoline
Took us a bit to figure this one out, but they are frequent sites in Cambodia.
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Angkor Away
6 Days wandering Angkor Wat and its neighboring temples has turned us into archaeological devotees, admiring every lintel, pediment, and bas-relief. Package tours bustle most tourists through the Angkor temples in 3 days, starting before sunrise and ending after sunset, ostensibly seeing the same number of temples that we have in 6 days. We lack…
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Cash is King
Bargaining with police men over the clearly posted cost of your visa is a new low. After 1 broken down bus, 10 hours overnight in a cockroach infested border town (the safe side), walking across the border, some bribery, and 3 hours off-roading on the highway in a Toyota Camry, we arrived in Siem Reap,…
Got any book recommendations?