Where we rested our heads

10 May 2011 4 Comments

by Robin in Australia, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, New Zealand, Vietnam Tags: , , , ,

Hotel Round-up

We slept in 58 different beds on our five month trip. Sometimes we slept on mats, other times we slept on the most luxorious beds in the world. We slept in huts, guesthouses, with local Vietnamese families, on trains and planes, in hostel dorms, in five star resorts, friends’ houses, and even in treehouses 150 meters off the ground.

We took pictures of the places we stayed so you can see what the more mundane part of our backpacking experience was like. Without further ado I give you Robin and Tim’s “Best of Southeast Asia Accomodation” awards. More

Advertisement

Tourist

13 Apr 2011 Leave a comment

by Robin in Cambodia Tags: , , ,

https://dl-web.dropbox.com/get/Public/08_Tourist.mp3?w=6be4396d

Cambodian Immersion at its Best

A procession of local Villagers...dressed in drag

Tim and I obviously love traveling. That doesn’t mean we love being tourists though. Actually, this is true of most long-term travelers. Chandler Burr really sums it up best:

“I hate looking at monuments. I hate waking up in the morning and thinking, ‘Oh! Today we’re gonna visit this abbey.’ We don’t do it at home, why should we do it abroad? The only thing I’m interested in is people, views, restaurants, and a clean, warm place to crap, as What’s-his-name said. You never meet real people when you’re touristing.”

So true! And yet each place that we went to we felt it was our duty to “see the sights.” Meeting locals and doing what locals do is even harder when you’re in places with cultural gaps as large and they are in Asia. More

Getting Better

08 Apr 2011 5 Comments

by Robin in Cambodia Tags: , , , ,

https://dl-web.dropbox.com/get/Public/15%20Getting%20Better.mp3?w=e395a32e
Volunteering outside Siem Reap, Cambodia

This post is very near and dear to Tim and I. We knew we wanted to take advantage of the time we had during our travels to volunteer at some point on the trip. Cambodia always seemed like the most likely place. Half of the 12 million people who live there are under the age of 22. (In America half the population is under 36). There are politics involved with volunteering though. Many orphanages demand a fee – and it is not insignificant. Volunteering for three to six months is the best way to get around this, but not everyone has that much time. We were lucky to run into a woman in Phuket who had just come from the Savong School and gave us the info. Our experience there was phenominal.

While no day was the same during our two weeks. Here’s what our days were filled with: More

Stuck In A Moment You Can’t Get Out Of

30 Mar 2011 2 Comments

by Robin in Cambodia Tags: , , ,

https://dl-web.dropbox.com/get/Public/02%20Stuck%20In%20A%20Moment%20You%20Can_t%20Get%20O.mp3?w=2022143b
Emotions take over, in Cambodia

some of the thousands of skulls dug up from the Killing Fields


Sometimes when I watch a movie, when its a good movie, it draws me in and I find myself, like many people, finding it hard to watch a scene because of the high emotion it evokes. I whisper to myself, “It’s just a movie, it’s not even real.” Here I was in Cambodia, and it is real – for better or worst. I kept looking for a pause button but I couldn’t find one.

Losing our Appetites in Phnom Penh
Everywhere we went in PP was sad. There were people with no limbs in the streets. I was once forced to step over a naked baby in the sidewalks, her mother most-likely purposefully positioning him there with this idea in mind. But the worst sight wasn’t of Cambodians it was of white men. They were everywhere. More

Disclaimer

Views expressed on this blog are solely the opinions of the blogger. Media found on this blog is for preview use only. If any artist or their representation wish to have the links removed, contact me and I will happily comply!