Modern Cambodia is a fearful place. When I say fearful I do not mean that it is without hope, it has that in the eyes of every young garment-worker with an iPhone, no I mean fearful of a return, a slip, back to the bad times.… Read More
… Read MoreThe first baby was born in a cave, or so they tell me. Probably some rocky outcropping near water in what is now the horn of Africa. The 1.8 million years since that first child fought it’s way into a harsh new world has softened things, made them safer and more survivable, but for parts of the world still struggling with modernity, some expectant mothers must not feel far removed from it.
… Read MoreWe meet bleary eyed at sunrise to board the convoy of rented minibuses that will ferry us through the bush to the wedding.
Anticipation is high, but first some of the worst roads in the world must be covered by our slightly tweaked bus driver.
Weddings. The merging of two lives. In the West it’s an expensive day that somehow manages to come off as cheap to everyone else. Paper napkins, disposable cameras, and the Funky Chicken. Vows are exchanged, fathers hide their tears, and little girls dance adorably atop their adult partners shoes.… Read More
* Warning – There Will Be Blood – Warning *
-Whack-
-Whack-
-Whack-
The dull ax, blunted by what looks like decades of use, thuds wetly into the hide of the dead Buffalo. Half butchered, like an unzipped beanbag chair, spilling it’s insides onto a makeshift altar made from the wooden door to a destroyed home.… Read More
Here, within sight of the beach and the hundreds of cheering onlookers it felt as if it might all unravel at the very end. The final hurdle of getting through the last line of breakers and on up to the sandbar seems impossible.… Read More
I’ve always known that a drowning man will pull down their rescuer to save themselves.
I understand it, that final animalistic will to live overriding everything else. At the time there is only that moment – survival or death. Guilt and judgement can come later, and from the safety of shore.… Read More
I’ve come-to lying on my back on the sand. The sky above is grey and the sound of the crashing waves is the only thing to be heard over the screams of a wailing mother.
I feel sick. Like I’ve just eaten at Golden Corral then climbed into a tumble dryer.… Read More
I always imagined saving a life would be a clean, heroic act. A trying moment after which one could, exhausted, bask in the praise of a job well done.
In practice, covered in my own vomit, and filled with unexpected guilt, I found myself unable to meet the hollow gaze of the young man I had just pulled from the sea.… Read More
Don’t shit where you live.
One imagined this to be a universal tenet. One shared by all. Or so I thought.
I’m swinging a pickaxe on the third storey of a crumbling mud-brick house on the outskirts of the Kathmandu valley, and I’m up to my ankles in human waste.… Read More
Ya know those classic pictures you have in your head of third world transportation? The Indian bus, chickens packed to the ceiling, people on the roof and hanging out the windows? Well India doesn’t allow that anymore. It’s unsafe and unbecoming of a modern nuclear nation state.… Read More
I arrived into Kathmandu on the eve of the year 2073. For the non-lunar calendar users say that puts us at about April 13th, 2016. The city one year on from the earthquake was lively and gearing up for the evenings festivities.… Read More
In 2001, King Dipendra of Nepal reigned for just 56hrs. He did so from a hospital bed, in a coma, having just gunned down almost the entire Royal family as it was sitting down to Sunday dinner.… Read More
‘At Mien Pleung.‘
So I can’t get a fruit shake?
It’s common enough to hear out here in rural Cambodia. Generally accompanied by an open hand, rotated at the wrist – the empty hand, held high for all to see, is a near universal Asian symbol for ‘don’t have’.… Read More
The temple complex at Preah Vihear is stunning. Not for the temple itself. No, that sort of grandeur comes from the behemoths of ancient architecture at Angkor Wat.
At only a mile long, Preah Vihear is dwarfed by the towering faces of Angkor, but they say sometimes it’s not the destination it’s the journey, and in this case it’s the truth.… Read More
Who wouldn’t want a personal escape helicopter?
I mean, how far off from a Bond Villain are you then? You’d just need a cat (and maybe a scar).
As I stand in the man’s bedroom I wonder if all the secret escape tunnels and machine guns made Bao Dai, the last emperor of Vietnam, sleep any more soundly at night?… Read More
Thank god for the rains. I just about couldn’t take anymore. The people. The mass of people – swarming and pressing fluidly up stairways and around columns – I feel like a drop of water in a surging sea of brown bodies.… Read More
Everybody needs a fix. I don’t care if it’s a simple cup of coffee, a cigarette, or a kale and blueberry smoothie with a shot of wheatgrass, everybody seems to need a kick in the ass sometimes.
It’s no different in he rest of the world.… Read More
She’s the ‘Squid Lady’, or Mūc Srey if you’re not into the whole ‘English’-thing. So that’s what you call her.
… Read More
My knees ache terribly. I feel like I’m nine again, crammed awkwardly into a tiny church pew. Instead of a Greek Orthodox priest yelling about damnation in a language I never understood I now have a plinth of brightly robed monks chanting at me about salvation in another.… Read More
The Wayward
There are only three M’s who travel to Asia. Missionaries, Mercenaries, and Malcontents. These are their stories.
‘Nick’, he says.
‘The thing about seventies porn was it looked like dang old every chick had Don King in a leglock’.… Read More
Kerfuffle n. (Cur-fuff-ul)
1. A small mishap or problem.
2. A collection of travelers, squares, freaks, hairies, dykes and fairies, setting off into the jungles of Cambodia in search of a place they have never been, yet inexplicably miss.… Read More
Psychologists say that the most common shared dream, aside from being naked in front of a crowd, is having your teeth fall out.
Herodotus believed that the dream portended death. It’s an easy allegory to make. The passing of time, … Read More
In the West you have to try very hard to be skinny. In Cambodia you have to try like hell to get fat.… Read More
The Khmer Rouge exploded on Cambodian culture like a nuclear bomb. Twenty years of freedom from France had created a bohemian pearl on the Mekong river. Film, music, art, all thrived under the mercurial playboy, Prince Norodom Sihanouk – nurturing them slowly back to life after a hundred years of French imperialism.… Read More
1903, Coney Island, New York. The worlds first snuff film.
A crowd has gathered at the unfinished Luna Amusement Park. The salt air off the beach mixes with the smell of taffy and fresh popcorn. The audience has been promised a sight … Read More
The recent Ebola outbreak in Western Africa has been in the news for almost a year now. More than long enough to filter out to the detached settlers of my small beach.… Read More
‘What’s the cheapest room you have?’
‘Well…we have some rooms in the back that are mostly used by Afganhi war refugees, but you probably wouldn’t wan…’
‘I’ll take it.’… Read More
T-H-I-R-U-V-A-N-A-N-T-H……
Sir?
Sir?
What do I do when I’ve run out of boxes?
No, boxes. For letters. On this form you gave me.
I have no more boxes, and still like half the…nevermind.
I’ll just say I’m going to Trivandrum.… Read More
The road is a blur.
Mountains, rivers, and endless jade-green rice paddies whip by at 70 clicks an hour. Pause to slowly work your way through a herd of water buffalo and then punch it.… Read More
Three months in and the strangeness of Asia has not gotten to me in the way I had figured. Sure, they call limes lemons, eat dog, and drink beer with ice, but at the end of the day that’s not enough to trigger the homesickness I had prepared for.… Read More
As far back as I can remember, I’ve always wanted to be a gangster.… Read More
Continued from ‘Easy Rider’
The plan was vague, but the ingredients were all there; motorcycles, asian-chicks, questionable meats. I had no solid plan of attack, little bankroll, and no wingman (or wing-woman, I’m an equal opportunity adventurer and as far as I know menstrual cycles don’t have the same effect on tigers as it does bears).… Read More
Bangkok Thailand, wretched den of vice and iniquity.
Even for those who have never been it conjures images of leering sex tourists and neon drenched prostitutes hanging lazily from the railings of go go bars.… Read More
One of the earliest memories I have of my father is a bedside chat at about the age of 8.
In it he outlined the paths that one’s life can take and how they are often vast and varied. That over the course of a man’s life he may try his hand at many things, some successful, others not.… Read More
‘You want boom-boom?’
I turn to look at the leering Xe-Om driver who smiles the most decrepit smile I’ve ever seen. I count two teeth and those are hanging on for dear tobacco-stained life.
… Read MoreFollow Us
