Indiana James and raiders of the public transport

So my dear folks I hope you all have had a merry old jolly Xmas with lots of ridiculously, meaningless presents! Christmas on my behalf was done Indiana Jones style trekking through ancient temples covered in green jungle! Who needs presents when you can have sunstroke and monkeys chasing you!!!
Ok I got so lost in time and place mountainbiking the temples I did the white boy, beginners mistake and forgot A. my cap at the hotel and B. had to prove myself right by taking the Grand circuit. See it was 20km of jungle biking excl the 10km to and from the temples also and having 35degrees Celsius didn't exactly help!
somewhere along the Ta prohm temples I lost my thighs and ass from the bumpy road and mistook slight headache for just headache when I was having a sunstroke!

Ah well, recovery came quickly through my new made acquaintances from  Australia along with the Happy hour Margaritas and Pizza!!! You really can't say no to 3$ margaritas or fresh mango daiquiris especially as it is buy 1 get 1 free =) And forget 4cl alcohol rules, you really get 2 drinks in one glass!
we found a local gay bar of the pub street with live dragshow which was quite entertaining to say the least...you really have to look hard for worse lip sync then theirs! Hitting the dance floor as no one else did we got to be center of attention and probably the only ones really having fun!!

It's a bit funny how much cultures can differ from home. For instance Christmas is celebrated somewhat here but on the 25th. Presents aren't exactly center here as back home, had a good laugh along with a guy who explained how he bought tooth paste for his friend as present (1$) and then explaining how we (white western people) slash our cards and buy playstations and tv's......he did not understand at all why. come to think of it neither can....it's the thought that counts still yes...? Well I treated myself to some presents eeing no one else would this year, went to the night market and got some cool Hillfiger pike's, fake designer watch and some other cheap nick nacks for like 15$ all together! Gotta love that shopping! Another nice culture difference is the mentality of the people here....yes they will lure you in to their restaurant to eat as you walk by, but it's not to trick you but the show you they are proud of they're food and want you to taste it. And they are ever so eager to talk to you, every other time you may have an hour long discussion with either the staff or some from a nearby table and it always feels genuine. They will help you with travel tips or sights in the vicinity or whatever. It's just refreshing coming from sealed Sweden =)

I'm posting a fabulous map of my adventures, I did the artwork isn't is stunning!!!!!!!!

Indiana James adventures!!

People come, people go!

Along this somewhat epic journey one truly encounters some lovely and generous people, who show really the best sides of humanity you wouldn't necessarily expect at home.
Some may stretch it as far even as opening a small gateway to their heart and revealing burdens or experiences in life, for the bliss of someone listening for the next 15min and just listening! Sort of Ï share my thought's with you and in return you share your if you wish".
There is something very honest and pure over exchanging life experiences with someone you barely know and end up spending the day or two with. I see it as sort of a quickie therapy session where the heart can rest afterwards.
I've been able to share moment's with some people that will last a lifetime! It so happens quite often that people on travel as well as myself are keen to listening to and meeting with other people and sporadic dinners and drinks will inevitably occur!
There is one person in particular I owe a whole blog to, but will mention here at least, as she really made an impact on me with that something in her personality with the days we spent together.
 Nicola was her name and from New Zealand she is! We met in buzzling Hanoi and had a blast just spending time on travel, sipping coffee and trading life stories....as well as general BS!
Departing was quite sad of course, but imagine the joy 2 weeks later crashing into each other on the busy streets of Saigon! Like running into an old friend from years ago. Needless to say we spent the next days together and had a blast again!

More recently I got to knew Maria. Maria is a 50 year old Austrian lady, who never till she revealed it looked or felt a day older than 30! There was a nice click, like the one you'd expect on the lock on the door and we ended up spending 3 days together and even traveling to a remote island together and just laying in hammock and eating fresh sea food and chatting like two fat slags at the pie bakery!
Sadly these short stories  remain just that, short stories and always but too soon come to an end as travel destinations differ. Quite sad when you consider you won't meet these characters again ever, leaving a sweet memory of them on you yet a melancholic state as well. In common they have that they all will be remembered!

Blissful I dreamed, blissful I got!

I arrived in Kampot on a somewhat cloudy Friday morning. The local bus dropped me of at the riverside road overlooking the river and some of the sweetest little eateries and shops in this town.
The first thing that struck my mind was sheer calmness of the streets, away was the buzz and insanity of the streets of Sihanoukville and Pnom Penh. My heart instanly knew there was something about this place that would cling on to one's heart and get stuck there like a loved one.
And I fell in love! I did....with the town that is. It inevitably is the calm that surrounds this town from the people to the traffic which is but dissolved leaving the streets a beautiful sense of calm and dessertion. The people offer you the honest of smiles where ever you go and can't help but strike up a friendly conversation loaded with intrigued questions and to exchange experiences and culture.

The man hiring me a bike couldn't help but smile when I returned on my bike asking for the lock to the bike that seemed missing, "there is no need for a lock" he said and smiled. Things here don't dissapear  he said! And so right he was. Here you walk down the street and driver will strike up an honest conversation with you and not even mention of hiring the tuk tuk.
Now did I mention the town is covered in mountains and a beautiful river?
I am sure this is where the people rub off on that friendly , laid back attitude as the surroundings are flowing with karma just pouring down the mountains covered in green lush jungle, they make for an awesome sight!
Couldn't resist trekking up on one of them. Having arrived approx 1700m high up the Bokor mountain to the Bokor Hill station, I was rewarded with some breathtaking sights covering hundreds of miles and some rich yet cruel history.

Now the Bokow Hill station served as a French (bastards) colonial resort built in the 1920's by the Khmer slaves for the rich and powerful, later on overtaken by the Khmer rouge to serve as a stronghold and execusion site for some 400 000 innocent victims. Well you know the story if you bothered to read my earlier blogs =)
Today deserted and a ghost town, bearing the remnants of the cruel history through it's shattered windows.

I ended up staying 4 nights in this lovely town, where I found the sweetest of rooms at the blissful guesthouse (proper name) and the coziest of restaurants in Wunderbar, set by the riverside and covered in great big sofas and armchairs to sink in. I came back here every night for dinner and a drink as well as to chat with German- Swiss owner and the Khmer waiters. I apparently made the waiters day as I left a 2$ tip for the friendly service and the honest smile, explaining the next day that the average income is some 30$ a month so this meant a lot of money to him. Hah, so I tipped him another 2$ the same night again...doesn't seem right for me to be able to spend 5$ on a meal, when that same amount is a weeks wage to some! Oh and did I mention that from the next day I was his favorite customer....hmmm I just might return to Kampot one day. Can't help tp feel at home here so to say!

From crazy to chill.

We managed to survive our first week in Cambodia, which can seem as an effort as you start to read down this blog. Been toxicated by the smells of Pnom Penh for two days we escaped quickly to the beach side city of Sihanoukville. A city bustling from tourism and tourism and more tourism. This was the first time I think we started to have some bad karma on our voyage, see we arrived late in the evening and it was raining....not the swedish gentle kind, but the asian monsoon in your face kind of rain =)
Didn't have much choice but take a Tuk Tuk (taxi motorbike) and point to one of the hotels in the Lonely Planet book. Getting there we managed to get the last room and that was just 5 sec before a couple behind us arrived looking for the same thing! So we checked in to "Monkey republic", yeah the name should have said it all haha...bungalows built on an inner garden, they seemed innocent and cute enough.
Sihanoukvilles power company (ever so corrupt) decided to cut the power every day in the city, saying it was a for a few hours but lasting the whole day (and night) anyway. So all the shops and hotels had to run on their own generators, which they did.....ah but not ours =) Well yes they did actually but just for the bar, leaving the rooms without electricity in pitch black during the night and without the cooling fan that is ever so needed, imagine trying to sleep in 50 degrees sauna...well you can't =)
Oh and as for the bar, it was apparently the place to be and the music, louder than ever went on for half the night and the thin planks of the room let in all the noice...not even the vodka and cheap Angkor beer could avoid that!

We met some kind (but strange) swedish guys at a local swedish bar (yeah they have that) on the beach and spent the day sitting there and talking, talking, talking.....they mostly talked about their 20 something girlfriends (age difference 40 years) and the local hooker bars that they loved. Can't say it was the most giving coversation I've had.......
We met with Nick's friend Anders (nice guy) and went to some bars in the night. Went to a place called Utopia which is supposedly one of the coolest bars in the city. We didn't even get around to order our first beers as two stoned out of their head guys started a fight, throwing chairs that med and Anders had to dodge from hitting our heads.....3 seconds later they pulled out a gun (or two) and started shooting each other!!!! People started to panic and run away, we took cover behind a wall, some people locked themselves in the toilets, just avoiding the bullets and hearing the gun fire in the background. After 10 min or so we ran out from there still hearing the gun fire a few feet from us! Next the local police came and what happened next remains a mystery!
Apparently Cambodia has the highest gun rate of all countries in the world and this is pretty usual happening, for me it was just retarded!!

So I guess you figured out by now what I think of Sihanoukville, just tourists everywhere and it is all about drugs, booze and hookers! All the 60 year old, fat farts walk with their 20 something hooker girlfriends.
I got out of town the next morning, Nick wanted to stay with Anders as they are friends and didn't meet for long. Me and myself took of to quiet riverside town of Kampot.

Wild West

Well, new country. new culture and new language. Great! well As always entering a new country is always quite nervwrecking for me. you have no idea what your getting yourself into and everything is new and scary. We got off the bus and felt like we were somewhere strange. I don't know how to explain the feeling but useally when I'm on the bus. No matter how horrible the bus ride is. I don't want it to stop. you see all these new places and all these people staring at you and you have no clue what you got yourself into. Luckily this feeling subsides very quickly and everything becomes fine once again.

Cambodia is a cool place. More dirtier than Vietnam but it has it's charm. It feels like you have entered the wild west and laws are abided but they dont have to be. They aren't as exploited as the other countries so it's always cool to talk to them. We were in Phnom Penh and man was it crazy. It has a mix between amazing and repulsive at the same time. you would walk to a park with wildlife (monkeys and other diverse creatures) where everyone is hanging about and then just down the road you would walk by a lady bar road with several clubs with dark tinted windows.

Now we have just arrived to sihounakville. Where I will try to meet up with a friend of mine and try to learn more of what their is to do. I do hope for the best...

Oh my, Oh my this is different!

I was going to do a blog about Vietnamese government and lifestyle but it's going to be next. Instead I need to write this about our current country we have landed in, Cambodia and Pnom Penh.

My oh my do I see a contrast to what we have seen so far! This city and the country is nothing to where we have been yet. I feel like I have landed in the middle of India, in a dirty, smelly and chaotic city as Bombay, seeing all the films and documentaries and reading books about India, this is the best comparison to make.
The is litter on the streets in tons! I'm not talking of pieces of paper only. You wouldn't believe the smells sometimes coming various things such as rotten meat on the street or trash bags thrown everywhere!
It always totally surprises you when walking down the street, enjoying the day and the wall of smell suddenly hits you haha =)

It does have it's charm though and there is something about this tuk tuk filled city, it could be the river promenade full of life or the kindness of it's people! See this blog is really dedicated to the people of this land and this city, I knew the history here is one of a kind but nothing could really prepare me for what it really is, told from the one's who experienced it only 20 years ago. I recommend you to wiki on this and learn of the saddest piece of mankinds history, The Khmer Rouge.

See somehow this party got the hold of power back in 1975 and within days started mass colonialisation of the entire country back to stone age! They're vision was to get rid of all that reminded of imperialism and to recall total communism on a level not seen before. The short version was that they managed to kill ca 3 million of their own people within 4 years and desert all major cities (yes the cities stood empty) and move people to the country side to work as peasants by force. All educated people were exterminated along with children, women even babies. And it is the way they did it that makes even old arsehole Hitler look like a nice old grandpa sitting in a rocking chair. They would just throw them on trucks, blindfolded and cuffed. The truck would stop at the "killing fields" and they would be killed instantly without question and killed in the most inhumane ways only, clubbed, axed or beaten to death with tools for farming. They did this to 3 million people of their own, who never did anything, even the babies had the same going.

It is sad history for this country, who is fighting hard to come back to democrazy. It has come far and it is a country of warm people who definetely know what to value in life! I am eagerly awaiting to see the rest of what this country has to offer! Tomorrow it is bus to Sihanoukville with sandy beaches and untouched islands for a few days!

One more country down....10 to go!!

Last night in Vietnam and spent in Saigon! It's been an awesome 4 weeks of travel in this beautiful and contrast rich country! Thought I'd give you viewers a conclusion on what I have seen and learned here.

We started our magic travel in Hanoi, well actually we still crossed the borde over to Lao Cai but this being a little, dirty town there is really not more to say on it's behalf. We just jumped on a night train down to Hanoi after being hassled by the local moto mafia and somewhat difficult and tired of her job ticket seller! Trains in Vietnam come in different forms, we grabbed a hard sleeper which means a cabin with 6 beds, 3 bunks on each side, window and table! Pretty cool if you don't mind the locals travelling with you and they usually see it the same way! Sleeping bag is good unless you wanna catch some bed bugs and get all scratchy and reddish =)

Hanoi is a nice, tranquil city that doesn't give the buzz of metropolis at all! It used to be fishing village just a century or so back, so it has certainly risen up a few notches! There are some nice lakes with surrounding parks and some nice old, colonial french architecture there! The old town is mostly invaded by local chip shops selling all kinds of crap, but there are some lovely cafes there to sit and rest on! A great place to stay was The Drift Hostel! Run by an australian girl, it was clean, modern and a great place to meet people at! We did have some Vodka buckets on those porches haha!

We got our  30 day bus tickets and started working down the (long) country! We got to Hue as our first stop, however this being yet another city, we felt that it didn't offer us what we needed in terms of relaxing and laying back! After being thrown back and forth in directions and a crazy ticket woman trying to lure us to her office, practically stealing our tickets, we finally got on the bus to Hoi An!

Hoi An

If you ever go to Vietnam, Hoi An is a must on your stop! A beautiful sea and river side town, built of old french colonial architecture, it offers some of the best food in Vietnam and tailoring for dirt cheap prices! We had each a shirt made (17$), Nick's was perfect fit but mine was just a bit badly measured and in the end left a bit big on the shoulders! Oh well, no fortune lost there and later on I got to hear some stories of really bad tailoring and down right scamming the tourists! In the end it is a bit the same everywhere, most people are just lovely but they do mostly see you as a walking wallet! Worst example is the street sellers, they'll do anything to sell you a pair of glasses for instance even though you have 2 pairs laying on the table already! It get's somewhat comic when one guy goes and 2 sec later another one comes and then on and on it goes 24/7!

We skipped Nha Trang pretty much, stayed one night as the town was just a bad copy of Phuket Thailand, dirty and full of russians! You know it's too much when the waitresses start speaking russian!!! So in the words of my good mate Nick, we got the hell out of Dodge and landed 16h later in paradise of Mui Ne!
We ended up staying a week (I left alone to Saigon before Nick) just really getting back energy, exercising and having some sweet night parties with locals and tourist at Joe's! Joe's is awesome, offering 24/7 open, free home cinema room with hundreds of films, lovely staff, live music and great vibe! Shit I think we went there pretty much every night! If not more than for at least kicking back and watching a film while eating huge baguettes and some Ice coffees!!!

Mui Ne

Not much to see around though in terms of culture, this is a place for just lying on the palm tree beach. We saw the sand dunes, a bit like Sahara but yet nothing like it in terms of size, just a funny thing seeing the huge sand dunes in the middle of the green woods! Great to hire a motorbike for 7$ and jetting around....I think we did as far as 100km/h on them......mmm wackos!!!

Well I left Nick (sorry mate) a couple of days earlier for Saigon, I needed again the buzz of metropole and I had my plans for a tattoo! What can one say about Saigon, like smaller version of Bangkok...ad I love it! Neon signs virtually everywhere, skyscrapers next to old french inspired colonial buildings (talk about contrast), green luscious parks offering shadow from the 35 degree heat and a huge market selling tons of nick nacks!!!

Saigon

The party seen there is huge! District 1 is main backpacker area and party area with bars and restaurants lined up! Had some crazy nights here before Nick turned up! It was easy to meet new people in the hotel and share experiences and you'd always end up going for a beer or a walk around town with some of them! You'd just sit down for a beer somewhere and suddenly start an all night conversation with the neighboring table and as time progressed there would land more and more people at the table until we all went to the next place! Dangerous though madames and monsieurs as buckets go for 2$ and contain 70% alcohol and not measured by the cl as back home!!

Got my cool (huge) dragon tattoo at Saigon Ink which seems to be the best place in town! Clean and thank god good at what they do it was an awesome experience for life!! As for now tattooing isn't so big in Vietnam as the locals (mostly elderly) consider it still dodgy and criminal to make one, so you could get half body tattoo for 200$ like petite moi!!!! If you can stand the exquisite pain that is!!

So folks, Vietnam has lots to offer whether you are budget backpacker or cozy romantic couple (think I'm gonna through up haha). Great food, awesome coffee (I'm addict), sandy beaches or mountains covered in jungle, budget shopping and island hopping! It is a same it is a country still rather closed, I'd open a hostel instantly if it would be possible as a western! Well maybe some time!!

Now it is of to Cambodia for serious culture andwonders of the world as well as some untouched islands in the south!! See ya!