As of now, I am in Spain, on a trip purportedly to improve my proficieny in the language. However, Spaniards hate consonants, so comprehension is difficult. Yesterday, in the old Muslim capital of Granada, wherein lies the fabled Alhambra, oft voted the most beautiful building on earth, two notable things happened. While traipsing through the Palacio Nazaries, the most ornate part of the complex, I inadvertantly convinced a tourist couple that a series of air vents were, in fact, nuclear fallout shelters. My sister asked me what they were, and I sarcastically replied with ¨Nuclear bunkers, obviously¨ in a nonchalant manner, and continued walking. The others immediately rushed over, and started filming the vents. I was somwhat surprised at this, and hurried to leave them behind.

The Spaniards, in all their Catholic wisdom, still have the tradition of ´12 Days of Christmas´, so the 5th of January is their night for celebration. We were caught in the middle of a street parade, which both taught me a valuable historical lesson, and shattered my faith in humanity. The Spaniards´idea of multiculturalism is having lots of Spaniards in blackface, in foreign clothing. As such, I learnt that the Pharoah of Egypt in the time of Jesus was called Balthasar, and was actually Kefka with black paint plastered on his face. Yet, the final component of the parade was a giant chicken, plastered with advertisements, blaring music from large speakers. It became apparent that the music was an advertising jingle. Suddenly, the entire crowd, all multiple thousand of them, started singing along, and making hand movements to the music. I was genuinely astonished at the seething mass of people, singing along with a giant chicken, about having the best price in town. I´m just glad I couldn´t understand most of it.

The border crossing of Chiang Khong/Huay Xai is rather remote, nestled in the Northeast of Thailand/Northwest of Laos, and best serves the rest of Laos by river, and as such, a plethora of boats ply the route down the Mekong towards Laos’ showpiece, Luang Prabang. When I crossed from Thailand to Laos at this spot last year, I found it slightly strange, and somehow amusing, that no attention was paid to our bags or belongings, and we were just herded through into motorised canoes to cross. Yet, a far more interesting border crossing experience happened at a different Thai/Lao border earlier this year, at one in the southern region of each. My sister was off looking at one of the local shops for crap to buy, and I was made to accompany her, while dad was off getting a drink, and mum putting her passport through Lao emigration, prior to going to the Thai immigration. Mum has a very distinctive laugh, and when we heard it loudly across the road, we ran back to the booth to see what had happened. A large group of French tourists were looking at her strangely, and she just wouldn’t stop laughing. Eventually, she explained what had happened; she had put her passport through the window to the official there, and he began to look at her strangely, and look back at the passport repeatedly. She said she thought that the Lao authorities were being uncharacteristically official, and was not displeased. The man eventually gave a resigned look, stamped the passport, and gave it back. Mum looked at it, and realised she had given him dad’s. Mum is short, has a roundish face, and long blonde/brownish hair; the passport photo showed a man with black and white receding hair, and a very prominent black beard. Apparently they looked alike enough to her to pass off as him, though.

Across the river, we boarded a two day boat to Luang Prabang. As seems to always be the case, the boat was full of French people. One found my sister amusing, and grabbed my camera to photograph her. As you do.

French cameramen can't resist Kathryn...?

About 4 hours into the 8 hour journey, the captain, if that title is appropriate, told us that the boat that left before us has crashed and blocked the river, and that we must wait for a while before continuing. The boat was anchored on a conveniently located sandbar, and some of us disembarked.

Sandbar and boat

It soon became clear that help was required, and all the men on the boat were whisked away to the crash scene downriver; I was not considered for this operation. In the couple of hours they were away for, I amused myself by skimming rocks with a gang of teenage monks. Those involved eventually returned, and the boat set off again, with all the men involved mysteriously in possession of large bottles of beer, though that was immaterial. We were scheduled to arrive at the overnight stop in the late afternoon, but were far behind schedule; the last half an hour of the boat ride as undertaken in pitch black; very unnerving when the boat in front of us managed to crash in broad daylight. Yet, we arrived in Pakbeng safely, to a large group of locals bearing candles, who informed us, after running of with our bags, that we would be spending the night with them at their guesthouse-style establishment. The view in the morning, when you were able to see more than a metre in front of you, was amazing. The second day was less eventful, though the French

The view from the breakfast table was pleasant.

enjoyed photographing a bloated corpse that floated past.

Luang Prabang itself is a wondrous place, and any description I attempt to give would be meaningless. Pity a Chinese superhighway is going to destroy it’s charm within a year or so. Towards the end of our stay there, celebrations for Lao New Year broke out, and the entire population of the town packed into the old town for waterfights, throwing paint, and smearing motor oil on each other. Kathryn started crying when a drunk Lao smeared her face with oil, and tried to throw blue paint all over her. However, the part I most enjoyed is when the inexplicable music that was blaring from everywhere turned into Dragostea din Tei, by O-Zone; I’d not really heard the song before, nor seen the Numa Numa Guy, or whatever that strange meme is, so it sounded new and strange to me. I was sitting on the riverfront, eating an egg and bacon baguette, and the entire population of the town was drunkenly dancing through the colonial French streets to the sounds of a Romanian boyband.

No drunks pictured.

It’s very strange to consider that it was only 4 years ago that I was in Vietnam; it seems like an age away. Everybody seems to be going there nowadays, though, so at least I got in before the major onslaught of foreign tourists. Contrary to the beliefs of one Ayden Dodd, and therefore, presumably, SACE Tourism Stage 2, the presence of many other tourists is not a positive one.

Across the multiple trips to South East Asia that I’ve embarked upon, I’ve seemed to have a remarkable affinity with Buddhist monks. Maybe it’s just because there are so many of them there that it’s impossible not to have experiences with them, but that’s rather immaterial. Perhaps the most bizarre was on the streets of Phnom Penh, when a gang of rogue Vietnamese monks broke into a Cambodian monastery and started violently beating the local monks, which escalated into a street brawl, ending with mass deportation and a diplomatic incident. However, perhaps the most surreal of my experiences with monks is that of a drag race down a river against a boat full of them, while our boat was sinking.

This is one photograph I wish I could claim as my own work.

The river was named the Perfume, (unfortunately, no lemon was involved) and the boat trip was to last an hour and a half in one of the metal canoes pictured, leading to a cave pagoda up in the karst landscape. The trip out there was pleasant, though the trail up the mountain was difficult to manage in such oppressive humidity. A break was had at a small restaurant, complete with monkey chained to the roof. Such cruelty is not uncommon in such regions, so, unfortunately, it was not surprising. Also not surprising, yet rather unpleasant, was the state of the toilets. I use the word loosely, considering behind the restaurant was a trail into the jungle maybe 100 metres, at which point a hole in the ground, surrounded by sodden muck, was plastered with a sign proclaiming WC. I decided it wasn’t as urgent as I had previously thought, and went back to the restaurant. Surprisingly, that is only the second worst public toilet that I’ve experienced, though the one at Bangkok’s Huamlamphong train station isn’t all that great; the worst was in Tasmania. You’d imagine that such a Western and progressive nation such as ours would be better than that, but apparently Tasmania is an exception. I won’t describe the condition of this toilet, but just know that there was a suspicious amount of blood mixed with the liquid across the floor.

The pagoda at the top of the trail was of interest to me, but would likely bore those without an interest in history, caves and/or Vietnamese people. I recently heard the awful news that a cablecar has been built to reach the top of the pagoda, but that’s the Vietnamese for you.

Not a great photo, but indicative of the river traffic

We reached the river once more at about the same time as a group of monks who we had passed on the way up. Both my sister and I have blonde hair, so our presence was a novelty that caused much amusement to such people. Strangers would come up and try to pull off Kathryn’s hair, because they thought it was fake. When we disembarked from the bank, the boat containing the monks was just behind us. My sister waved at them, which they seemed to interpret as a challenge to their manhood, or something, and they all immediately removed their sandals, which they used to paddle. To this, both my sister and mum removed their shoes, and began paddling with these too. This caused an uproar in the monks’ boat, and their vigour increased. I was ordered to remove my shoes and help in the effort, and when I looked down, our boat had a thin layer of water across the bottom. There was a leak; we had almost an hour left of the boat trip, and our boat was sinking. Mum also noticed, and ordered me to stop Kathryn from knowing; if she found out, she’d freak out, and we’d all fall in the water. So, while she was madly paddling to keep ahead of the monks, I was subtly bailing out the boat, while attempting to cover the leak with my foot. This continued for a while, until one of the parties gave up; I actually can’t remember if it was us or them. I witheld the knowledge of the leak until the very end, though, at which point the boatlady demanded an exorbitant fee to fix it, something in the lines of $20,000, which we declined. We did give her some money, though, even though we were under no obligation to do so, considering the boat was damaged before we entered it; a reasonable amount to get the leak fixed. However, even the extortionate powers of the Vietnamese pale to those of the Egyptians; one man demanded $125 for a souvenir hat; mum paid $1.

I was never intending to write about this experience, for however enjoyable and interesting it was to me, I’d not think it would be well received by others. However, those past thoughts are immaterial, and hence, you shall informed.

For those of less than intellectual and investigative nature, check this link before continuing; http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7672506.stm

‘Tis a current event, even if it only gets screentime on SBS.

So, as you no doubt have guessed, this remote Khmer temple was blessed with my presence, as little as 5 months ago. There were bunkers and RPG-clad soldiers there even then, but we were informed that that was merely a hangover from the time in the not too recent past when the Khmer Rouge ruled that area.

While the temple complex is technically in Cambodia, arriving from that direction is undesirable, unless you enjoy 4 day motorbike rides through virtually uncharted jungle. Hence, a border crossing was necessary for us to visit.  Nearing the outcrop that holds the temple, we were stopped by a man with some sort of automatic rifle; he demanded to see our passports. We were shocked, as we had stupidly left our passports back in the hotel safe. Our fears were unfounded, however; for a small fee, we went to a Thai man who handed us each a slip of paper with PASSPORT written on it. Cambodian customs were a sight to behold; a small wire fence with a metal gate saying IN, with nobody checking anything. Hence our very official emigration to Cambodia was a success. The various merchants waiting on the other side were intent on selling me cigarettes, but I politely declined.

Head tilting is once again required.

Upon the temple summit, I turned a corner and stumbled upon a Thai family picnicing. You can tell that they’re Thai by their yellow shirts with the Thai emblem on it. Stupid nationalists. Anyway, they didn’t approve of me, for some reason, and all stared angrily, yet silently. I backed away, careful not to fall to my death.

I apologise for the lack of amusement in this post, yet I felt compelled by the nutcase Thai’s actions to tell this tale.

From what I’ve heard, Athens is unpleasant yearround. I do not find that hard to believe at all. Yet, upon our arrival in Athens airport from Hania’s joint public/military airfield (mum did not wish to opt for the 24 hour ferry), I came to an awkward conclusion, having just recalled something from the back of my mind; Oh my God, Eurovision is on tonight. We walked from hotel to hotel, always to be rejected, once by a large dog, as everything had been booked well in advance, and we were used to the Asian idea of being inundated by options upon arrival anywhere, until we found a dive over in a somewhat Red-Light-District area of Omonia. There was a shared balcony with no way to lock the door leading to it, so we barricaded it with chairs and a table.

When we were able to actually explore the city, we came across some oddities.

How appropriate; you fight like a cow.

You fight like a dairy farmer.

Strangely, everywhere we went there were cows. Yet, the zaniness was not over yet; apparently the Acropolis itself was to play some part in the Eurovision festivities. For all the effort of accidentally being there, I was unable to actually watch Eurovision that year, as our accommodation lacked a television, but that is rather immaterial.

Ancient ruins; best served with fibreglass dessert.

Upon actually entering the Acropolis site, I spied a group of Americans, one member of which had obviously read up on their history, and was explaining this to their friends. A security guard came up, and ordered her to stop; only registered guides were allowed to divulge info about the ruins. They thought it was a joke, so they laughed, and she continued. The guard repeated the same line, and the American got annoyed. The guard then called the police, proclaiming that the whole group would now be arrested. I casually walked past at that point, pretending to not have been listening, and when I came back around the other side, they were gone. I don’t know what happened to them, but Matt Harding, of wherethehellismatt fame, was thrown in prison for dancing in front of the Acropolis, so I don’t really know.

In conclusion, Athens is a hole, and not worth a day of your time.

When you’re roughly 13,322 kilometres from home, preoccupations you had back there are not usually something you would think about. Hence my shock one morning upon descending from my 8th story room in my Cairo hotel. I quite literally did a double take upon entering the ground floor; there was Steve Scanlan, at that time my supervised study teacher, eating breakfast with his wife and son. I passed it off as my imagination, but he seemed to regard me with the same mix of suspicion/apprehension/intrigue. As it turned out, it was him, and by coincidence was on the same group tour as us. I detest group tours, and find the notion incredibly stupid; ’small groups’ of ‘no more than 50′ get to follow a lady with a fluorescent umbrella in the air, shielded from any sort of contact with the local people or country itself. However, I was coaxed into submission, and yielded to my mother’s desires to travel in with a group of other families, as apparently the Middle East isn’t very safe, according to her. But her paranoia is immaterial. I mean, there was only the one terrorist bombing while we were there, and no tourist kidnappings had occurred for over a month before we arrived.

Scanlan turned out to be quite the amiable fellow, and his wife and son were of the same ilk.

The most interesting part of this Egyptian sojourn, at least anecdotally, was the ‘cruise’ down the Nile. Ignoring the fact that the boat we were on was utter crap, the scenery was enjoyable; the downside was the fact that the boat was full of French people.

Quite the confidence booster, no?

I have no quarrells with French people on principle, however these particular ones were obnoxious, loud and rude. The obvious recourse was to walk around the deck declaring that “Nous avons les champignons, sur le Pont D’Avignon”. This, however, attracted me some unwanted attention; I found myself with a French stalker. She was a little younger than I was, (at least, I think she was), had a strangely deformed face, and communicated only in grunts, even with who I presume was her mother. I don’t know what she found so appealing in me, but spent the rest of the time following me as if she thought herself to be some sort of secret agent; ducking behind chairs whenever I looked in her direction, crawling towards me underneath a towel, ducking behind corners inside the ship, and so on.  She eventually tripped over, and fell into the metre cubed of water that was apparently a pool, and was carried inside, never to be seen again.

How many French stalkers can you spot in this picture?

There was a ‘dress-up party’ one evening, which Scanlan attended in an ‘Egyptian Gentleman’s Robe’, which seemed suspiciously like a dress. I’d post a picture, but I don’t believe he’d approve; also, he has pictures of me, albeit not in a dress, though. Still, that is not desirable. Maybe I’ll bring it to school on the last day to give to him as a present.

The only place I've been where the air literally tastes bad

Tell me, rabid viewers; which cherished story shall I next bestow upon you? Catching a bus with drug dealers? Racing monks down a Vietnamese river while our boat is sinking? The Tale of the Pervert Monkeys? When I was semi-abducted by a teenage South African? Being attacked by a Lao motorcycle? Unexpected Eurovision? Being lost at sea in fog? Wading through croc-infested waters in WA? Swimming with sharks off Cairns? The only place in the world that can create toast both burnt at soggy simultaneously? Drag racing through the streets of Cairo? Or shall I recount stories of my parents 1989-90 6 month Kombi sojourn through Europe, including tricking the Russian Mafia, driving through Yugoslavia while the war was going on, or driving through Checkpoint Charlie the day of the Berlin Wall collapse?

Wow, reading all that makes it seem like some crazy brochure, or something.

Alliteration exudes style, no? Familiar to those who I’ve known for a while, this story takes place when I was around two years old. Fortunately, I believe, I cannot recall any of the events.

I was in Bangkok, as two-year olds are wont to be, and was venturing through the streets of Patpong with my parents, and a family friend, who incidentally is highly ranked in the Australian military. As anyone who has visited Krung Thep Mahanakhon Amon Rattanakosin Mahinthara Yuthaya Mahadilok Phop Noppharat Ratchathani Burirom Udomratchaniwet Mahasathan Amon Piman Awatan Sathit Sakkathattiya Witsanukam Prasit (Bangkok for short) can attest to, this area is less than pleasant for those not looking for a ‘good time’ with some local ladies. The question is raised why my parents thought it sensible to take me there, but that is immaterial, I suppose.

As anyone would expect, the small, white, blonde child that I was attracted the attention of a transvestite. They’re surprisingly common in Thailand, and ladyboy is almost an official third gender.  I was apparently taken from the arms of my father by this man, and promptly whisked into a nearby brothel. Obviously a little shocked, dad raced in after me, and retrieved me, I’m not sure exactly how, the details have never actually been given.

Hence, the stroll through the Red Light District continued, with me present, and merriment ensued.

It is strange to consider that had I not been retrieved, I’d currently be some sort of brothel-worker. Well, there’s no sense in pining over missed opportunities.

Sorry, no photos. I don’t believe they exist.

Yet another sucked into this void, it appears. Introductions are overrated, especially considering you’d know me if you’re reading this. If you don’t, then fret not; your life has been enriched by my ethereal presence.

I’m not one for extroversion, so this blog shall serve as a medium to relay, and in my case, relive, some of my experiences abroad. It may be sad, but the only goals I have in life are travel related, as I’ve never known anything else.

Here, have a Jumbo.

I like photography, and while I have a rudimentary knowledge of the art, my ethos is ‘If you take many photos, at least a few will be good.’ I believe this is the case with me; my sister disagrees. Her opinion is immaterial, though.