Cam t'Asia

If you go to southeast Asia, odds are you'll go to many temples. Most of the temples are Buddhist, some Tao, some Hindu, and probably some others. The temples are, by and large, beautiful: ornate trims, packed with symbolism; Buddhas in many different positions, which all mean something different; the smell of incense in the air; stories depicted on the walls through elaborate images; gold and gems reflecting brightly. One thing I wasn't expecting, however, is how it feels to walk through these places. I'm not religious or spiritual, but there's been an unmistakable "bigger than you" feeling as I've explored these places. The air feels almost thicker to walk through, like there's some ethereal presence there. I get a slight pit in my stomach. The high ceilings and the Buddhas and other statues towering over me make me feel small. My footsteps seem louder. The best example of this was the rock temple in Dambulla, Sri Lanka. I was lucky enough to walk...

Travelling alone makes you more of a target for scams, especially here in southeast Asia, so after a few months on the road, I was used to this and just assumed most people were trying to scam me in some way. Usually, this was true... but sometimes it wasn't. One of the first rules to live by out here is to always ask the price of something before you agree to it. Often in the case of transportation, someone will ask you where you are going and then, once you tell them, herd you onto a nearby vehicle without another word. Especially in the case of taxis or tuktuks, this is dangerous, because if you don't know the price beforehand, the driver can make up basically anything they want when you arrive at your destination, and you have no choice but to pay - it's not like you can say no and walk away at that point, like you can before you get in. I had a minor slip up in Colombo when I asked the price of a bus before I boarded it at the station. The driver told me, but for ...

The journey from Malaysian Borneo to Indonesia was not as straightforward as Dana and I had hoped. We were in Semporna, a port town in the southeast corner of the province, in hopes that we could catch a boat to Bali after doing some diving. The journey turned out to be a lot more convoluted than that, with many stopovers in "less travelled" places. Semporna is where we discovered how famous we were. Most divers elect to stay on nearby Mabul island to get to the famous Sipadan dive site, but we chose to stay ashore in Semporna and make a longer journey by boat to do our day of diving. As a result, everyone from shopkeepers to fishmongers hooted things at us as we walked by, whether we were heading to dive in the morning or looking for a place to eat dinner at night. They spoke amongst each other and pointed at us, sometimes with an excited tone, sometimes with a mocking one. Dana is tall, blonde, and Belgian, so she got most of the attention - generally people couldn't...

I went to Borneo because I pictured it to be lush and green, wild and untamed, teeming with rare birds and mammals. Unfortunately, that wasn't the case, at least not in the province of Sabah on the Malaysian side, where I decided to spend my time. It /was/ mostly green, but for a different reason: acres upon acres of palm tree plantations. Palm trees has always been a pleasant sight for me: they meant tropical weather, beaches, and coconuts. Here, though, seeing the organized mass production of them was a total eyesore. The reason why there are so many of them, I learned, is because palm oil is the biggest export in Malaysia. The country actually pays its debts in palm oil instead of money. People make relatively good money working in the palm oil industry, and even more if they agree to grow palm trees on their own land. However, a huge cost of this industry is that it endangers the amazing wildlife that used to thrive here. The Kinabatangan river is a great spot to do river...

One of the cooler things to do in the Sabah province of Malaysian Borneo is a safari along the Kinabatangan river. At the suggestion of a group of 4 Germans I befriended near Kinabalu national park, I contacted a man named Osman, who ran a homestay and did two daily river safaris. They had seen some amazing sights on his safaris: pygmy elephants, tons of monkeys, even a clouded leopard eating a proboscis monkey in a tree (which is basically once in a lifetime). Osman allegedly took David Attenborough out on the river, was an extremely talented guide, and had a very nice family. However, I read some reviews of his homestay on TripAdvisor and there were several pretty alarming ones about his temper. The Germans had said he was a bit crazy, but didn't mention anything about a fiery temper. I decided to go anyway on their recommendation, and the assumption that the reviews were being a bit dramatic. After contacting his wife, Yanti, through WhatsApp, I boarded a few local buses to g...

"Are you doing the loop today?" he asked me. Half an hour later, I was on the back of his motorbike and we were off. The Ha Giang loop is a slightly-off-the-beaten-track road trip in the northernmost province of Vietnam. Most people do in 3-5 days, but I had planned to be there at least a week. I arrived on a bus from Hanoi planning to do the loop by public transit, but when I met Sam that morning at the hostel, we decided to go together, at least for part of it. Almost as soon as we got out of Ha Giang city, the landscape began to change. We were in the much wilder mountains and hills of the north, driving up switchbacks to beautiful viewpoints, down cliffside roads, past trucks and other bikes and local people walking with large full baskets of corn or rice or other plants. The first day took us to Yen Minh, via two mountain passes to the Heaven's Gate viewpoint, and a two hour stopover to hike the longest, hottest kilometer of my life to some neat caves. We stay...

I took a bus from Hanoi, Vietnam, to Luang Prabang, Laos. It was supposed to be a 26 hour journey and drive through beautiful landscapes in Laos after crossing the border. One of those things was true. I took it because it was a third of the price of a flight (which would have taken an hour), and, being in the last month of traveling and incurring some unexpected expenses back home, I'm trying to save money wherever I can. Anyway, here's what happened: 5:00pm I was waiting in my hostel lobby to get picked up, when a man on a motorbike rides up in front and starts flailing his arms motioning for me to come out. He will henceforth be known as Dampe. I grab my bags and walk out the door. Not the minibus I was expecting, but I wasn't fazed. "Luang Prabang?" I ask. "Yes yes yes," Dampe replies as he takes my day pack from my hands to put between his legs. I barely had time to get on the bike before we were off. 5:05pm We arrive at a tourism office and ...