There’s salt in the air again, we can smell it. The seaside town of Mui Ne is a mark on the map for many travellers for beach time, sunshine and flash bars; for us though the primary function of this seaside oasis has nothing to do with sun or sand and everything to do with […]
Wind whistles past us as our bikes splutter and misfire through the busy streets of Ho Chi Minh and onto the offramp and into the tunnel that will spit us out of this big friendly city. There’s a deluded optimism that fends off the unending list of reasons not to do this in favour of […]
There’s plenty of different modes of travel in the world and on this trip we’ve had a good crack at sampling every possibly one of them, including the all time romantic favourite, the road trip. We reminisce of the three week mud dash that was Botswana; fending off Hyenas, cowering in the tent from Elephants […]
What’s this whole business about a ‘coffee buzz’ I hear? Can’t get to sleep, makes me shaky, I’m buzzing; all common catch cries for the caffeine light weight. I want a buzz too, where’s my buzz? Maybe we’re a just tougher or possibly we’re simply pre-enlightened addicts, but for whatever reason coffee remains for us […]
We want you! In the 50’s we hadn’t all seen those words before, emblazoned over the image of the man in a top hat looking half applaudingly and half accusingly with a finger pointing off the poster right at you. Apparently he wants you. Red white and blue adorns the iconic backdrop as he calls […]
A good place to visit; such a common expression said so flippantly about so many places but what do we really mean when we say that? Maybe it’s when places are all the things we want them to be, the exact environment we chase; maybe it’s when it’s the opposite, a new experience to give […]
Beggars. Every travellers nightmare, the doorway to an awkward world where no response is appropriate and no emotional resolution comfortable, so rarely are our intellects and our hearts torn in such opposing directions. No matter how succinctly we rationalise a give-or-not-give flowchart in our minds, feelings of guilt, unjust opportunity, empathy and even some outrage […]
There’s a story I have, a story of the earlier and formative years of my life, before an adulthood which permitted no romance placed a full stop at the end and closed the book. Charlie has a similar story, albeit shorter, the story embedded in Australian history long before it was called history. It’s the […]
The time travel machine that is Cambodia continues it’s jarring shifts between eras and the varying faces of this little country that continue to surprise. From the 12th century in Angkor to the late 20th in Phnom Penh, Cambodia has so much history unobscured, placed in such bold light that seeing a Cambodia today isn’t […]
Upon entering Cambodia we reflected on the 1980 song ‘Holiday in Cambodia’, released just after the murderous regime of the Khmer Rouge crumbled it was a concise lash out at the whining comfortable middle classes. Instead of complaining about trivial problems that aren’t really problems at all, the song so elegantly said: what you need, […]
Charlie and Steve's Excellent Adventure 