Want to Lose Weight? Trying Eating Dust.

I need to get fit. Much as I have loved the last 5 months of adventuring, it has not been good for my health.

Too much beer, too many cakes and too long sitting on long-haul transportation has done terrible things to my body. I am fatter than ever before, my muscle has shriveled to the point of uselessness and my cardiovascular system probably resembles a set of bellows.

NEVERTHELESS, this seems like the perfect motivation to improve and become MORE POWERFUL THAN EVER BEFORE! Before I left in March, my training had reached a state of maintenance – I wasn’t really improving at anything, simply staying at the same level of fitness.  

Bored: A Crossing

Seriously, fuck travelling by bus in Laos.

It is 600km from Luang Prabang to Chiang Rai…and it has taken us 40 hours. FORTY HOURS!! That’s long enough to build my own bus, find and extract my own oil for petrol AND drive to bloody Thailand!

40 hours. 24 of which were spent thus:

And 6 of which were spent thus…

A Cave Too Far: Stopping for Cakes in Luang Prabang

After some much-needed recovery time in Vang Vieng, we catch a morning minibus to Luang Prabang.

Although it isn’t a very long bus by our standards, it is probably one of the worst; the road to Luang Prabang is slow and winding to a nauseating extent. It is a mere 185km, but it takes us all day aboard the most uncomfortable bus I have ever had the displeasure of placing my ass.

Still, when we arrive we stroll through the night market and check into a lovely little guest house by the river. The next day, we break our fast at a wonderful little bakery and spend the day taking in the many sights of the city, starting with Mount Phousi, a hill in the middle of the town with some very nice views.

Based on my small amount of research, the accepted way to review Mount Phousi is as follows;

“It takes some time to get to the top, but keep on going because the views are worth it.”

It’s 339 steps. Unless you are 85 years old, physically disabled or entirely pathetic it is no harder than using the London Underground. Yet the views are definitely worth it:

We decided it was too hot to wander around the museum, so we headed to the other side of the town to take in the spectacular Wat Xieng Thong (Golden City Temple).

Unhappy Pizza

24 hours after eating our Happy Pizzas, we are still pretty stoned. 48 hours later, we still feel rather strange. The last 2 days have been hell. Who mixes weed and mushrooms?! As if thinking something is trying to kill you isn’t bad enough, now you can see it too!

To be fair, it probably doesn’t help that these were sharing pizzas and we ate a whole one. Each. Still, when in Rome! Or…when in 4000 Islands…

In any case, we’ve made it to Vang Vieng, the Gods only know how.

The journey hasn’t been easy…

Been There, Don Det: 4000 Islands

After an enjoyable but harrowing few days in Cambodia, the time came for us to move on.

To help us get over the sights of the Killing Fields, we went out for a drink. Being us, this quickly turned into 15 drinks as we steadily worked our way through the entire cocktail menu. By the end of the night, we were given what we can only assume were Loyalty Shots:

Luckily, we ordered four dinners to absorb some of the Purple Rain…

Please Don’t Walk Through the Mass Grave

After our energetic day around Angkor Wat, we relaxed for the rest of our stay in Siem Reap. The following day we ate three cakes, drank lots of beer and did nothing more active than looking around the old market, where we purchased some trousers more suited to the Cambodian climate.

This was the first day that I started feeling truly shitty, with some kind of stomach ailment that would last the entire rest of the month. Some might speculate that it was caused by my tendency to eat thrice the foods of a normal man. Those people I would punch in the knee…then claim their breakfast as my own, by right of conquest!

In any case, the time had come to leave Siem Reap and, given our lack of time in the country, we turned away from the coast and headed inland to the capital city, Phnom Penh. To get there, we bought tickets on an overnight bus, which turned out to be in the form of bizarre flatbeds stacked on each other. Naturally, these were not of Western proportions and I spent most the night spilling out of mine.

Although we arrived in Phnom Penh early in the morning, we went to bed almost immediately and stayed there until mid-afternoon. At that point, we went out for lunch and spent the evening drinking beer and watching a movie about the Khmer Rouge takeover of Cambodia (still one of the most horrific pieces of human history).

Tomb Braider: The Tale of Angkor What?!

Having spent three days in Bangkok, eating cakes, drinking bad cocktails and getting excellent massages, it was clear the time had come to venture elsewhere – lest this year’s foray into South East Asia turn into nothing more than an implosion of hedonism.

It was, therefore, with the perverted excitement unique to long-haul bus journeys that we booked a 12-hour bus to Siem Reap in Cambodia. Having never been to Cambodia before, this was the obvious place for me to visit first; despite becoming a tourist haven in recent years, it is just a few kilometres away from the incomparable Angkor Wat – the largest religious monument in the world!

Although I’m not really into religious monuments on the whole, I do love ancient things – especially epic architecture. I also never turn down the opportunity to take some bleak and honourable photographs, in honour of the Guild!

This time, however, I am traveling with a different adventurer, Vikki Moyse, who I temporarily dubbed the Tomb Braider in a honour of her adventuring hairstyle of the day.