Travel Strut
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Two Ron Toe 9,905 Posts
Anyone on vacation right now/just got back? Or heading out soon? Any photos or cool experiences?
I'm leaving Tuesday for a month. Hitting up Hong Kong, Thailand and Cambodia. I've been to Thailand before, but HK and Cambodia will be completely new to me.
Anyone do the border crossing into Cambodia before? Tips?
I'm leaving Tuesday for a month. Hitting up Hong Kong, Thailand and Cambodia. I've been to Thailand before, but HK and Cambodia will be completely new to me.
Anyone do the border crossing into Cambodia before? Tips?
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Kologo player and singer Akamdumah Amodoo, live at a pito bar in Bolgatanga:
Pito is a local, home made, millet based beer. Here's my friend Ken with a calabash full of the good stuff;
I almost never take pictures when traveling in Africa. Africans generally aren't too hot about having their picture taken without being asked first and when you'd want to shoot street scenes you just can't ask everybody beforehand.
View from an outdoors bar in Mampong (central Ghana). Looking at this makes me want to buy a plane ticket...
Alien looking bug that landed on our chair in an open air restaurant:
After a few minutes it dropped onto the seat and died:
unconventional dj moniker:
Road Trip Photo Album
The whole trip was amazing and I never properly said thank you for all the great suggestions some of you gave me in the old Road Tripping thread.
Thanx guys!
Talk to the homie Kenny about HK, I'm sure he can meet you for dinner and give you some good ideas of places to go, where to eat, etc. In HK if you stay in Kowloon, I suggest:
the The Inter Continental Hong Kong hotel
http://hongkong-ic.intercontinental.com/honic/index.shtml
The Peninsula
http://www.peninsula.com/hong_kong/en/default.aspx
Shangri-La Hong Kong
http://www.shangri-la.com/en/property/hongkong/kowloonshangrila
Afternoon Tea at The Peninsula is always nice.
The Spring Deer restaurant has great duck and is a good spot for a nice dinner:
Spring Deer Restaurant (1/F, 42 Moody Road, Tsim Sha Sui)
RE: phnom penh to siem reap.......road was shite 10 years ago, and mosquito infested bus was horror.......malaria concerns are unfounded though, it's VERY unlikely you would catch malaria in Cambodia!! I remember new roads.freeways were being built then, SO i'm guessing it's much better now
DON'T eat between these places IMO...I got well sick, not having any choice of places in transition >.
forget the GUIDE, just hire a bike and do it yourself or with some peeps your'e either travelling with OR meet.....TA PROHM is a must in angkor wat! and DO steer clear of any sexual escapades..........I remember going down a dirt road to some bar/club....along the way was a stretch of 2km, filled with shanty whorehouses and whores to match........HIV city, baby! not that I' saying your'e not well aware of such yourself...
try and get off the beaten track, meet the locals and explore.....
stayed in sihanoukville and rode by bike to KEP to chill and have some crab as the sun rose......nice
enjoy your travels
Obviously stay far far away from Juarez. I'd cross the border at Brownsville / Matamoros first thing in the morning and make a straight shot to Miramar if at all possible.
www.cavelodge.com in northern Thailand, vewy nice
Sounds like a plan, thanx!
Currently in Bolivia, we are lazy at uploading but there is some photos here >> http://papertreephotography.tumblr.com/
Cambodia is amazing man, I don't know what it's like now because it's been a while since I've been there but expect many hours in the back of open utes and cattle trucks on long dusty roads. Fantastic.
Looking at the pics now, they are excellent.... yeah Buenos Aires has more dog shit than ever.
BTW, that ain't no Condor! Cara Cara maybe?
I did the road trip from Bangkok to Siem Reap in 1999-2000? Things must have changed a lot since, but I stayed in a cool little backpackers in Seam Reap. The guy who ran it told us to help ourselves to mary-ju-wana from a plastic bin-liner he kept in the fridge. Round the back of the guesthouse he had a crocodile farm. I don't know if this place was an oddity, or it's the Cambodian thing, but when I ordered garlic bread, they loaded it up with sugar. So maybe ask if they intend to put sugar on it if that's not your thing.
Neighbouring Laos did the best coffee I've ever had in my life and they might serve up something similar in Cambodia. Keep your eyes peeled for a big stainless-steel barrel as they leave coffee brewing in it all day long and will pour it through something like a sock (acting as a seive) on the end of a wooden spoon into your cup. Then they pour in some of that sickly-sweet tinned milk you get everywhere in Thailand. The best.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/mass-graves-in-mexico-reveal-new-levels-of-savagery/2011/04/23/AFPoasbE_story.html?hpid=z3
SAN FERNANDO, Mexico ??? At the largest mass grave site ever found in Mexico, where 177 bodies have been pulled from deep pits, authorities say they have recovered few bullet casings and little evidence that the dead were killed with a gun.
Instead, most died of blunt force trauma to the head, and a sledgehammer found at the crime scene this month is believed to have been used in the executions, according to Mexican investigators and state officials. The search continued Sunday, with state officials warning they expect the count to rise.
They say as many as 122 of the victims were passengers dragged off buses at drug cartel roadblocks on the major highway to the United States.
What does that mean? Buenos Aires has more dog shit than ever?
I'm headed there by bus in the next couple of days. Should I be aware of this?
Thanks again for all the great pics FRANK. I'll make it to Africa one day!
- spidey
ok... this does sound a bit discouraging.
Yes that is. Fly to Guatemala, rent a car and do Central America from top to bottom.
If you make it to Mexico City, let me know...
that's one of the best make-an-LP-cover-your-face i've seen
whoah, what IS that?!?!!!?!?
equatorial aardvark beetle?
Things up north are fucked up big time. But you, as an american, are safer than anyone else. They don't mess with you guys because they know it's too much attention and pressure. They know that one american murdered can be the excuse for higher pressure, rougher methods and, even, US goverment prosecution.
I could assure you you won't be affected by narco violence. I'm not trying to minimize the situation, shit is terrible, but the worst goes to Average Joes making their daily lives in towns and cities controlled by narcos.
Is hard to believe, but Mexico City is now much safer than other cities in the country, so if you're plan is coming down here, you'll be cool.
Thanks!
I have no idea... my Ghanaian friend also didn't know what it was...
Thanx for some on the ground perspective.
It probably would make most sense to go in by plane and rent a car locally but I don't want to put our 3 dogs on a plane... well, there's still a lot of time until November, maybe we'll just take another Southern US road trip and save Mexico for later... there's even a possibility we might move there (or someplace else in Central America) sometime in the future.
Cheers, my partner has shot a shitload of stuff but like I said we are either too lazy or too busy doing ish to get them up.
Where are you at now?
The word Condor conjures up some regal ass imaginings, we saw plenty of condors and figured them for vultures......which is what they are. We stupidly assumed they would be sexy.....which in hindsight they kind of are. Thanks for the heads up.
We stayed in a Favela in Rio, one night after getting hammered with a German dude (Frank) we were sitting at what passes for a bar inside the entrance to the Favela when gunfire started popping off. When I say bar, I mean just a small haphazard shopfront with about a dozen people sitting in the gutter or on a small bench. There was about 5 drug dealers stationed nearby and trade was brisk, a lookout was also standing across the way and I never once saw his steadfast gaze drop from the single entrance to the favela up the alley.
Anyway, so machine gun fire starts popping off and everything started happening fast. People started running, dudes were hiding drugs and guns and all the lights went out. the only people left were the two stupid gringos and a couple of locals we had befriended who were as buckled as us. We were still processing events when I look up and see a dude in a balaclava with a machine gun poke his head around the alley wall in front of us, he had one gloved finger to his lips. Another 8 or so BOPE dudes came round the corner fully dialled, guns aimed squarely in our faces, made us interlock and patted us down. They fucked with the locals in a big way trying to make them gag by choking them out to see if they had drugs. My buddy was so hammered he was speaking in tongues (german I guess) and I was alternating between saying "tourist" and "Australian" and "kill the German first". They never once spoke and jetted fairly quickly, the same dude putting his finger to his lips. They spilt up and continued into the favela. The shop front reopened and as gunfire continued further down in the favela we ordered another beer and dudes started drifting back to claim their stashes.
On The first day they arrived in Lima, Peru they said they landed, took a cab to their hostel, dumped their stuff and went for a walk in a nearby park where they were immediately offered cocaine (the stuff is thrown at you constantly if you look the part).
So being their first time abroad and since they'd only been in the country five minutes, they accepted. As soon as the transaction is conducted a cop materialises, searches and finds said coke. Now the cop insists they accompany him to the police station or pay a bribe, either way they are to come with him, where upon he taps his gun for emphasis. The now extremely shook english lads comply and get into a cab with the cop.......a cab, the cab takes them half an hour or so out of the city into the what our english friends assured us was the slum and then cleaned them out o the tune of 1000 US.
When they told us this story they were both struggling to get through "Bolivia's hottest Vindaloo" for the free t-shirt it came with. I shit you not.
Similar renditions of this story pop up all the time, the adage " There's a sucker born every minute" is as true as it ever was. It's like lambs to the slaughter in some places.
Nearly every night we go out and start talking to group of english dudes they have some story of a friend of theirs "accidentally" having sex with a transvestite by mistake or being on K and being taken advantage of by a transvestite.
Anyone else have any tales from the road?
mount hutt on the south island!