On the road, I have a bit of free time. Whether on a bus, plane, or train, I get to read a lot. So what have I been reading lately?

The Road by Cormac McCarthy:  I read an interview with McCarthy a few years ago, and I remember thinking he sounded overrated and arrogant.  So I never picked up one of his books, even though he won the Pulitzer for The Road and had No Country for Old Men turned into a movie.  I had a change of heart in Cambodia and decided to give his Pulitzer book a go.  It is amazing.  Tragic, but he really beautifully written.  I was very impressed, although occasionally he likes to use words that probably only a handful of people (and everyone who is studying for the GRE) know the definition.  This grates on me a little.

American Psycho by Brent Easton Ellis:  I got this book gifted to me by a Dutch girl the day I left Cambodia.  I have never seen the movie.  First off, the book is quite sick, twisted, and graphic.  This book is not for the light hearted.  Second, it is awesome.  The shallowness of all these people in this high society world is very well portrayed.  There is a particular scene involving everyone at the table comparing business cards, and its fantastic.  The main character is absolutely crushed when his doesn’t have the best typeface, color, thickness.  I am only about half way through, but will probably finish in a few days because I can’t stop reading it.

My first real scam attempt in South East Asia! So exciting. Here is how it went down:

I was sitting in a park drinking a mango smoothie purchased from a woman selling them out of the back of a pickup truck. A man comes and sits next to me and starts making conversation. He soon tells me he is from Malaysia and asks where I am from in the states. I tell him Wisconsin, and he starts talking about his niece who is going to Wisconsin to work at a childrens hosptial there. I ask him if it is the Madison Children’s Hosptial, and he promptly says “Yes! Madison. I couldn’t remember the name before.” – Later, I realized that he was just using and repeating what I was saying in order to establish a connection.

His back story was that he is in town visitng his brother and mother. He wants me to meet his niece, just to tell her about Madison and exchange information. The niece is out shopping with her cousins, but he wants to take me to his brother’s place where I can wait for 30 minutes untill they get back. Everything so far seems pretty kosher. The man is nice enough and seems legitmate…

So, we hop in a taxi and take a 10 minute ride to his brother’s house. I walk in, they offer me drinks, and we all start chatting. Nothing too serious at first, talking about Obama, F1, and traveling. He asks what I do for a living, chat about that for a bit, and then I ask what he does…and here is where the scamming starts.

He tells me that he is a casino manager. He asks me if I enjoy gambling, what games I play, have I been to Las Vegas, etc. Then he tells me that he is being reassigned and moving back to Malaysia next month. Next thing I know, he is trying to convince me to come and stay at his Casino in Malaysia. He says he can get me free rooms, free drinks, $100 a day in free slots, etc. At this point I was getting pretty skeptical. I told him that I was planning on going to Malaysia and I didn’t really know when, but I could email him when I got there. He then started talking about which games to play, which ones were the best for the casino, which were the best for the player.

Then he dropped the real bomb. He casually mentioned how Casinos, while so closely watched in Vegas, were not well regulated in Malaysia. He then says he could probably use his “influence” to give me an advantage over the house in a few of the card games. When he said this, I knew for sure it was a scam. I quickly looked at my watch and asked where his daughter was (it had been over half an hour). He said she must be running late. I then told him that I really didn’t like casinos and wasn’t interested in gambling on my trip. How quickly the tables turned! He thanked me for coming and apologized for his daughters abscence. He said he didn’t want to keep me any longer and 30 seconds later, I was out on the front porch with a door in my face!

Other than being stranded in a part of town where no one seemed to speak english, I came away no worse than before. I finally tracked down a cab and made it to the train station just in time to catch the next train north.

I just wanted to post a picture of this. The bathroom in the guest house I am staying at is ridiculously small. The picture was taken standing outside of the bathroom. Also, you can barely see it but there is a shower spigot on the left side of the wall. To take a shower I sit in the sink….

Finally, after 4 attempts to get a video on to YouTube, here it is!

As a side note, YouTube has started stripping the audio from videos where they detect you are using a copyrighted song.  Luckily my other videos are fine, but there are now thousands of videos on YouTube that are eerily silent.  And yet again, the music industry continutes to piss off its own customers….

I am in a dilema.  Currently I am in Vietnam. The original plan was to fly to Malaysia for the Formula One race, but that will leave me 10 days or less in Vietnam.  I really would like to go to a Grand Prix, so the next option is to head north and hit the Grand Prix of China in mid-April.  So I am putting the question to the readers!  What do you think I should do?  Vote now!

Sorry, there are no polls available at the moment.

Just bought my bus ticket, leaving in one hour.  Cambodia has been insane though!  I have really enjoyed it here.  Its quite a unique country and very different from the others around it.

I will be in Vietnam for about 10 days and then the plan is to fly to Malaysia for the Malaysian F1 Grand Prix.  This isn’t for sure yet, but it is the general plan.  Depends on how much I enjoy Vietnam.  Another option is just to got to China and then the Chinese Grand Prix in Mid-April.

Today I went to two very intense places around Phnom Phen. The Tuol Sleng Prison and the Choeung Ek killing fields. Quite an harrowing experience. To see the hundreds of skulls stacked in the stupa at Choeung Ek was particularly chilling sight. With the internet speeds here I can’t post any pictures yet, but I highly recommend clicking through to the links and learning a little more. The Khmer Rouge only ran Cambodia for 4 years, but over 1.5 million people died during that time. It is not something we hear about too much in the US.

I am waiting here for a visa to Vietnam. Maybe I will take day trip down to the coast tomorrow. The next day I will try and go see some of the killing fields and prison camps from the Khmer Rouge regime.

The travel map as also been updated to the current location!

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A common question I get:

What it is like to travel alone, and do I meet people along the way?

Well the truth is that it sometimes gets lonely.  But being alone forces me to talk to people I probably wouldn’t otherwise meet.

First off, I get to meet some of the locals.  In Bangkok, while waiting for a boat, I met an old man who lived near by.  He was trying to improve his English, and apparently he goes to movies a lot so he can learn.  We talked about The Dark Night, Milk, Valkaryie and Slumdog Millionaire.

On buses, especially, I meet other travelers.  When there is a bus full of locals, and only a couple foreigners, its easy to start a conversation.  On the way to Cambodia I chatted for a while with a guy from the Czech Republic, and ended up splitting a hotel room for one night with a girl from Holland.

Sometimes, I just meet people randomly.  In Cambodia, while scrambling up the steps of a temple, I met a nice family from San Diego.  The dad works for the Department of Defense and the whole family has lived in Singapore for the past two years.

And of course as I am sitting here typing this, I am also talking to a younger spanish couple about the temples and the good things to see in the area.  The traveling world is quite friendly.  It is very easy to meet people, and some of them are amazingly interesting as well.

Finally after a few hours I managed to upload pics of the bus crash

The travel map has also been somewhat updated.

In other news, over the last few days I have gotten a little sick.  I have some travel info books with me, so I’m 99% sure is a bacterial infection going on my with my intestine.  So last night I bought antibiotics for 4 bucks from a shady pharmacy in Cambodia.  They pretty much had every drug known to man available over the counter.  Good news is I am feeling better already

PS :My mom is going to freak out when she reads this, and think I am dying from a rare tropical disease  in Camboida.  Mom, I am OK.