My favourite new experience in Cambodia and Vietnam was seeing how many people can fit on a moto (motorbike).

In that part of the world, people don’t really ride motorbikes, rather a local kind of scooter or “step-through”. Katie says there’s no age limit to riding them in Cambodia, as long as your feet reach the footrest.

And yes, the whole family will fit on a moto. Very usual to see babies and children sitting in front holding the handlebars. i love it. In Vietnam the children wear helmets .. in Cambodia not.

Traffic here is something else entirely. The one rule appears to be “Give way to bigger vehicles”. Lauli said it was like schools of fish in the sea; you swim with the group, go with the flow.

So far i have seen on the back of a moto:

• a huge live pig with its trotters bound
• whole cooked dead pigs (2 or 3)
• twenty live roosters, tied by their feet
• panes of glass, held vertical
• a live goat bleating pitifully as its enormous scrotum swung in our car window.

Desperately seeking comments:
Please share your “back of a moto” experience.

My beautiful old iRiver died while i was travelling in Cambodia. It disappeared from my luggage on a bus. Device death by disappearance.

i was sad, i was disappointed.
But sooner or later i had to have another music player**.

So i chomped on the ammunition and stole an iPod classic from JB hifi. They took $325 from me but it felt like a steal anyway.

Heaven.

Glamor-tech.

Charming.

and no i don’t have to run iTunes.
So Relieved About That!!

Yes, Winamp manages an iPod just fine.

• No fuss,
• no silly synchronising,
• no locking the pod to only one computer.

Just drag the files across and there they are.

Yay Winamp.

PS: not perfect, this device.

• Sensitivity of wheel changes according to mood;
• iPod freezes, yes freezes;
• display by coverflow is dumb: every song is displayed with its album cover.

**Yes i have the iRiver e100, but that’s a kind of joke really. When you put the micro SD card in, all the screen writing reverses to mirror image. Fortunately i can read mirror writing just like da Vinci.

photo credit: Themis Chapsis

Thinking back to my time in Vietnam, one of the best things about travelling is the people you meet along the way ..

• Like the Vietnaustralian guy from Sydney who had had “such a boring time” returning home for his sister’s wedding;
• or the Parisien woman returning to her native Cambodia for the first time since 1974, to share christmas with her Son who’s moved to Sydney;
• the German art student who’s half Vietnamese, and studying in Saigon .. to get a better feel for her father’s culture;
• the UK couple, an entrepreneur and his partner, who sold up to go travelling, and flee the UK economy because it has changed shape .. into something more pear-like;
• a Dutch woman who takes a couple of 8-week-long travelling holidays every year.

And that’s not even counting the flocks of wonderful people in Phnom Penh, lovely exPats and aid workers, volunteers, NGO people, teachers and masterful communications officers!

Really it’s all about the people isn’t it

so tell me .. who did you meet in an exotic location?

photo credit: shapeshift

Shanny and Phil turn up in a tuk tuk, to take me to the Russian and Central Markets. Peter is their regular driver who takes them all around town from their base in the Lake District. He’s a friendly man and a good driver.

Along the way, his tuk tuk starts to make cranky noises but after a while it’s okay. Using bits of English and sign, he tells us it’s an oil problem, but he’ll fix it later. He waits at each market while we shop.

My favourite part of the market is the area where women sit cross legged on the counter chopping meat with giant cleavers. The meats hang raw and bloody in the muggy shade. No refrigeration.

oh, there’s the deep fried spiders too.

You always get the best noodle soup at the market, no doubt!!

What a fun day. i love it !!

More than i have been in a long time, i’m totally excited about family christmas.

woohoo!

Margot, katie and michael .. in Pnomh Penh, soaking up the magnificence of Cambodia.

i can’t wait

i thought the traffic was mad in Phnom Penh .. and it is! Bikes traveling along only centimetres from other cars and tuk-tuks. People weaving in and out of traffic as though it’s a giant tapestry.

To cross the road, you just walk into the traffic. Bikes and cars move around you. Terrifying at first, until you get used to it.

Lauli described it as a giant stream full of many schools of fish. You need to learn to go with the flow.

Then i realised that the whole stream is moving at around 20-30kmh .. and actually the drivers are all really good at managing tight situations.

They drive slowly enough to be able to change course instantly. It helps that most people are on pushbike or moto .. you’re totally aware of everyone around you. Not cocooned and separate in a car.

No way would Australians drive slowly enough to manage this traffic.

When we got out of the city onto the open road, our driver hit 60kmh and it felt unbelievably fast. Oh, then you see the buses driving down the middle of the road at high speed. Now that really is mad.

.

photo credit: thejonoakley

.