We talk about his time in the islands of Thailand, scams, souvenirs, eating dog and much more.

Highlights -

Meeting Alice, Sandy, Phillip and Ross on the bus to Siem Reap
Exploring Angkor Wat, Angkor Thom, Bayon, Ta Prohm (“Tomb Raider”), and other temples
My first shiatsu massage by a blind person
Visiting and supporting local community – Butterfly Garden restaurant, Angkor Children’s Hospital, Handicap International
Talking travel for hours with Alice, the girls from Finland [...]

I was up early and in the hotel lobby by 7:30 am. My destination was Don Det, an island on the Mekong River in southern Laos. On paper, it seemed like a short 8-hour day, the worst of which would be the 4 hours riding dirt roads on the way out of Ratanakiri.
I [...]

On my second day, I opted to hire a 4×4 to tour some local ethnic villages. I went with a different guide, who also operated the small internet shop next to the hotel. He spoke better English, and was offering the tour “at cost” meaning he would not be earning a profit. [...]

I slept late the morning after my harrowing bus ride to out of the way northeast Cambodia. When I walked downstairs to find breakfast, I was practically ambushed by a tour guide for the hotel. I agreed on a half day moto tour of three local waterfalls, along with a stop at [...]

Sometimes I use shorthand in my journal to track my day. The following events are real. If I knew proper names, I would most certainly use them. It is worth noting that the advertisement for this minibus trip to Ban Lung in northeast Cambodia stated 10-12 passengers. The trip was [...]

 
Each time I broke a camera, I was annoyed but grateful my mp3 player was still intact and working fine.  Unlike removing photos from a digital camera, I can’t remove my music from a broken mp3 player.  I remember spending weeks burning my CD’s to mp3’s, and then loading 7 gigs of my favorite music.  [...]

I ate lunch at a pleasant restaurant directly across from S-21, and headed out of town on the dusty, dirty, pollution-choked road to the killing field at Choeung Ek. All but about seven of the 10,000+ prisoners that passed through S-21 were killed. Some died from the torture, beatings, disease, or malnutrition, [...]

I spent 2.5 hours touring all 4 concrete buildings at the Tuol Sleng genocide museum. Under the Khmer Rouge, the former school was referred to covertly as S-21.

Stepping into the former cells in Building A, I was confronted with a solitary bed frame, old ammo boxes which were the prisoners’ toilets, [...]

I studied a little bit of architecture in college, and while I’ve forgotten all those pesky details we had to memorize for exams (you know, minor stuff like influential architects, buildings, and styles), I retained an appreciation for architecture as art. The French Colonial architecture seems out of place in an Asian country [...]