Time in Austin has been fun and comfortable – too comfortable. The first month or so was easy, but since then we’ve both been getting antsy.

All we talk about is other countries. We can censor ourselves when other friends are around (sometimes), but when it’s just the two of us, the conversation is broken up by these sorts of non sequitiurs:

“Remember than Indian guy in Thailand who ripped off his shirt to show us his tattoos?”

“How much would you love to do this in Japan” (“this” applies to almost everything. Today it was frisbee throwing)

“Can you believe that just six months ago we were in Cambodia?”

Any fear I had of being complacent in Austin is gone. I love it here, but I can’t wait to be out on the open road/sky again.

I’ve been tempering this wanderlust with short trips. LA, Vegas, Kentucky, and Boston so far. Toronto soon.

Nothing is final until it’s over, but here are the rough ideas we’re thinking for next year:

Trip #1 (Jan-Mar) – Panama, Colombia, maybe Peru (Incan trail to Macchu Picchu)

Trip #2 (May-Jul) – Trans Siberian Express from London to Moscow to Beijing

Trip #3 (Sep-Nov) – Japan (yay!) and Korea

We’ll see what really goes down, but that’s the general idea we have so far. I’m not sure if Todd has some different ideas for some of the segments.

Next year’s blogs should be even better. More video, more pictures, and a surprise that I can’t talk about until it’s finalized.

One of the best parts last year, which we hadn’t planned for at all, was that a lot of people were generous enough to put us up in their houses or show us around their countries. If you live outside the US and would like to put us up (even for a short time), show us around, or take us on some adventure, e-mail us!

It was my shoes. At each stage the police glance over the runners to make sure they’re properly equipped, trying to prevent idiots from increasing the fatality count. My Five Fingers hadn’t failed me over five months and eleven countries, but I wasn’t running on her watch.

All this for nothing? I feverishly tried to explain in my rough Spanish that these were running shoes… people run marathons in these! I’ve run marathons in these! They’re specially made for running?

She grabbed another policeman and together they forced me out through the double fences bordering the path the bulls would take.

I sprinted to another entry point and tried to get in, but another cop pushed me out violently and told me I was too late. I ran to find another but couldn’t. How could I tell people I’d been to Pamplona but hadn’t run?

Then it occurred to me — I could just run the next day.

That morning I picked up some $30 running shoes and met two Lithuanian running partners at the internet cafe. Only one was going to run, but it didn’t take us long to convince the other to sack up.

Ty gave me some invaluable tips. He’d stuck to the right and was pushed up against the wall as the bulls passed, safely insulated by a few layers of people but disappointingly out of reach.

We arrived a little earlier in case something went wrong so we’d have plenty of time to move to another stage. Running on a Saturday meant tons more people — it was starting to get packed, and when the rockets signaling the bulls’ release were fired the crowd started to sway back and forth.

The police set us free to start running. The crowd was super thick and moving slowly, but we still reached the next stage before the bulls and became part of an even larger crowd as we waited.

At this rate I’d never get close to a bull. I looked behind me and saw some Spanish guys stretching. They looked like they knew what they were doing.

I walked back to them and watched them warm up, expecting the bulls to round the corner any second. After a minute or so, the cheering started. People packing the balconies above us were looking back expectantly.

Then everyone started to run.

You’re much more likely to trip over a person than a bull is to trip over you, but by then most of the people were way ahead of us.

The bulls largely stick to the left side, so if you stay right you’re less likely to get stuck or trampled. Though touching the bulls is officially discouraged, it’s what everyone’s trying to do, me included, so I stayed just right of center.

It wasn’t scary when the first group appeared behind me to my left. Everyone had told me how huge they were (almost as tall as me — six feet) and I’d seen them fly by the day before. The field was open enough that I could have dodged out of the way if necessary, and the bulls seemed to be pretty set on their path.

As the second one passed me I leaned left and touched his flank. We’d come up on a slight turn that would put the next group on the right side, so I veered left and put out my hands to keep from tripping over the people in front of me.

The next group passed and I reached out again to touch another along his back. They were probably running twice as fast as I was.

Probably because I wasn’t on the receiving end of any horns, they didn’t seem particularly violent or malicious. Just your average group of bulls trying to get from point A to point B, though they did trample a dude or two while I followed them.

Only 30 seconds after we’d started running, we ran through the gates and into the arena, another group of bulls seconds behind us. If we’d entered before any of the bulls, the crowd would have booed us as cowards.

We waited along the sides as the rest of the bulls and steers ran through the arena and into the holding cell. Usually you wait a few minutes for a young bull with blunted horns to be released to play with the runners.

As they went to close the gates, I slipped out at the last second and stepped into the streets. I had an 8:45 bus to catch to Barcelona.

I ran with the bulls. I even touched two of the 1600-pound monsters, just a slip away from injury by horn or hoof. No falls, no cuts, no bruises.

Too bad, really… I’d love to be able to show off a scar on my forearm and tell how I got it running with the bulls in Pamplona on a trip around the world.

For me the trip was an epic journey, one that I will remember in great detail for the rest of my life. We could have very easily stayed in Austin and had very little change in my life, but we didn’t.

Instead we walked on the canal in Panama. We sat with friends under the cherry blossom trees in Tokyo. We looked out from the tallest building in the world in Taipei. We drove ATVs through the dunes of Qatar. In France we walked through rooms of bones in an unauthorized jaunt through the Paris Catacombs. We ran with the bulls in Spain and lived to tell the story.

We stayed in Taiwan’s only six star hotel and we slept on cardboard boxes in a freezing cold cave in Japan. We rode in the world class Queen Mary 2 across the Atlantic and we bailed water out of a handmade canoe in a remote bay in Panama. We went through the longest tunnel in the world in a Japanese bullet train and sat on the roof of a rickety falling apart train in Cambodia.

We visited friends living abroad, made a lot of new friends in many cities, and were visited by family and friends from the US. People in five different countries gave us beds to sleep in.

We learned phrases in a dozen languages and each developed a respectable level of proficiency in Spanish, French, Chinese, and Japanese.

All of these things are just scratching the surface of the experiences we had. And although they are some of the most grand sounding, the real joy came from walking down streets that I didn’t know existed a month prior with the familiarity of my own neighborhood.

Saying that I’m thankful to have gone on this trip would be a gross understatement of the way I felt every time I looked out at a new wonder of the world and whispered to myself, “what a life!”

I’m grateful to have been able to afford the trip, for everything throughout history that has shaped the incredible places we went, for the technology that kept us comfortable and productive, and for having a friend like Todd to share the adventure with.

All that’s left now is to top it next year… (well… and to catch up on stories from this trip that we haven’t posted yet)

This style of travel is pretty exciting. We usually don’t plan for the next country until the night before we go, and sometimes we don’t even get to it that early. When you’re only in a country for a couple days, you tend to do a good job of maximizing the the time that you have there.

Despite this, I’ll probably avoid this type of travel in the future in favor of staying long periods of time in one place.

When we were in Panama we really got to KNOW Panama. We know street names, restaurants, neighborhoods, people, and the little quirks that make the city unique.

Same with Japan. Tokyo feels familiar, like home. We stretched out all over the country and have a bit of insight into the different prefectures.

Taiwan, where we spent a month, is the same but to a lesser degree. Even one month didn’t seem like enough time.

But the worst part is that it really wreaks havoc with the bare bones routine we have. Eat healthy food. Work out. Work. That’s not to say that we haven’t done SOME of that, but I can’t remember the last time I had a meal that I was SURE didn’t have any surprise ingredients.

Work has suffered. I get the minimum done, but it’s hard to justify sitting at home on the computer when I’m in Qatar for two days and know that we can go to the middle of the desert and rent ATVs to ride through the dunes.

“When’s the next time we’ll be here?”

That’s our call to battle that closes the lid of the laptops and gets us out the door.

On the other hand, it’s nice to get a sneak preview of different countries. I now know that I’d love to spend more time in Hong Kong. I probably wouldn’t go back to Qatar. We had a blast there, but I think that other Middle Eastern areas might have a bit more to offer. Also walking around feels like someone’s blasting you with a flame thrower. 113 degrees the one day I measured.

Two months is the right amount of time to get settled and check out a city. I think that next year when we start our three weeks in Austin and three months abroad schedule, we’ll probably spend two months in one place and then the last month exploring the surrounding area or a few countries on the way back.

Until then, it’s time to rack up some more stamps in the passport.

We were worried about where we’d stay in Hong Kong. It’s a famously expensive city and we intended to be there for about ten days.

I always say, “Everything always works out perfectly,” to which Todd always replies that it’s dangerous to say that.

But for Hong Kong, things once again worked out perfectly. A week or two before we were to arrive we got an e-mail from a couple who live in Hong Kong, offering us their two extra bedrooms. Wow!

Even better, they live on Lamma Island, which is this strange island just off the coast of Hong Kong. Despite being only 25 minutes by ferry to the city consistently rated as the best city in the world to have a business, the island feels more like some Thai beach town.

There are no vehicles on Lamma island, just narrow pathways that connect the apartment complexes, waterfront restaurants, and beaches.

We met Jenny and Aaron as well as some of their friends right near the ferry pier and they showed us the way back to their place. We sat up for a while sharing our stories. .

They have an adorable daughter named Maeli (which means beautiful in Mandarin). Normally this would mean a settled normal life, but they traveled throughout Asia for a year or two with her until settling down to live in Hong Kong. Aaron is a programmer and is well known for being on the board of directors of Apache, the web server that runs most sites on the internet (including this one).

We spent most of our time with Aaron and Jenny. It makes such a huge difference to have a local to show you around and steer you away from the overrated tourist attractions. The highlight was definitely the vegan barbecue on the beach the last night that we were there. One of the things Todd and I are constantly looking for is guacamole, and Jenny made a ton of it. So good.

Hong Kong is a really cool place. It’s a relatively thin strip of super developed urban area, bordered on one side by the bay and by beautiful green mountains on the other side. The perfect mix of nature and dense city.

In fact Hong Kong seems like nearly the perfect city. The ONE problem with it is that they speak Cantonese, which is a language I have no interest in learning. If they spoke Mandarin, I’d be there for months on end.

I may not go back for months, but it was an amazing place and a great time, and I’m sure we’ll be back to visit our friends there next year.

The tradition in Pamplona is to sleep in the park, and then run with the bulls the next day. This is a convenient tradition because we didn’t want to pay for hotels anyway.

We walked as far away from the festivities as possible, which go all the way until around 4am every night, and set up our awesome Luxury Lite cots in the park. We locked our bags shut and locked them to our cots. Sleeping was a bit cold since we don’t actually have sleeping bags, but the Luxury Lite definitely keeps you comfortable.

The next morning we woke up and frantically packed our beds up to get down to the city to run. Runners had to be in place at 7:30. At 7:28 we were running around like chickens with our heads cut off trying to find the right place to duck through the wooden safety barriers.

Just in the nick of time we squeezed in and took our places.

I wasn’t scared until then. The odds of getting hurt are actually very low, but that doesn’t make much difference to your brain when you’re in a cobblestone alley that’s about to be a racetrack for 1500 pound bulls.

“No.”

The police officer was pointing to Todd’s shoes, the Vibram Five Fingers. They are intended for running, but he didn’t buy it. I don’t think I’ve seen Todd angry on this entire trip, but he looked like he was about to explode. We tried to explain that Todd is a runner and that the shoes were made for running, but they weren’t hearing it. He got pulled out and I was pushed down further by the crowd.

Not running with the bulls wasn’t an option. Todd would have to buy new shoes and we’d stay another night.

That night, however, was freezing and windy. There was no way we could comfortably sleep in our spot in the park. So we waited up in the bus station, hoping that when it closed we’d be permitted to sleep in it.

No dice.

Then we went to an underground parking lot and tried to pay the day rate for a parking spot.

They weren’t having any of that either.

We decided to walk out of town a bit, away from the crowds. In town there were so many people trying to find somewhere to sleep that we knew we probably wouldn’t find anything.

We crossed the street near the bus terminal and walked across the big sidewalk-median that separated the lanes. We passed over a grate that was blowing out hot air.

“Maybe we can just sleep here.”

It was so nice and warm that we decided to try it even though it was nearly certain that the police would move us. Maybe we could get at least an hour of sleep or so before we got kicked out.

We set up and our beds became an instant spectacle, particularly with my silk sheets and the eye mask I got from Qatar airways. To our surprise we were never kicked out and we slept soundly all night.

Well, not totally soundly. People woke me up a few times to take pictures and girls would yell out “sweet dreams” and “good night” as they passed. Here’s a video:

We had no idea, so when our flight landed in the wee hours Friday morning, the entire city was shut down. We had the wrong address and ended up in the industrial section 20 minutes out of town. The sprawl was incredible — LA has nothing on Doha.

We tried asking for the “city center,” also unaware that a building in the new downtown bears the same name.

Doha’s trying to compete with Dubai for the title of premier gulf city, so the new downtown is populated almost exclusively with cranes and unfinished buildings. It was getting hot quickly in the high-rise ghost town.

If we could just get to the Internet, we could look up the address and even call the hostel if necessary. Unfortunately the guy at the 24-hour pharmacy told us everything would be closed until 4 pm.

It was about 7 am.

There were tons of closed shops around the area. Maybe one would have unprotected wifi? After a few minutes of scouring the area with our phones, we had the address and phone number and were in a cab on the way to beds and air conditioning.

Doha’s only hostel turned out to be quite a bonanza. There are a ton of clean, cool rooms, the common area is done very nicely, and they have fast wifi. It’s a bit out of the way and requires a little direction in addition to the address for taxis, but in a city of excess, paying $20 per person per night is worth it.

Taxis, by the way, are normally super difficult to hail. They apparently retired all the old orange taxis before there were enough new ones to replace them, so when I called in to request a pickup, the wait was 4 hours.

We wanted to get down to Sealine Beach, about 45 minutes outside of Doha, so we figured we’d wander around in the 113 degree heat until we found one.

We were pretty pleased to find our friend John, who was also staying at the hostel, getting out of one just outside.

You wouldn’t expect a guy in his fifties to be interested in blasting around the dunes on four wheelers, but he only took a second to think before he was in. We swapped stories as the sun moved lower in the sky.

One enormous dune came up on the horizon. No build-up of smaller dunes, just BAM!! Cue the dunes!

We tracked down some four wheelers and cruised up and down, found jumps, even raced across the flat desert to the next set of dunes. Had a close call or two too.

It’s too hot before evening to do much of anything, so the next day we visited the old souqs (markets) to look around and find dinner. There were tons of spice and fabric stores, and you’d be able to find almost anything else among the huge variety of shops.

After a walk down to the port to check out the budding skyline. we were ready to get some sleep before the early flight to Paris. Qatar Airways is a blessing of an airline, by the way.

We jumped at the opportunity to extend our layover in Qatar to a couple of days, and I’d do it again. Awesome to get my first glimpse of the desert and check out a gulf nation.

But man is it hot.

A repeat? Take some time off? Some combination?

This sort of travel is self perpetuating. If I had ten places I really wanted to visit before leaving on this trip, I now have twenty. Most people we meet are travelers, and they all have crushes on cities that then get transferred to us.

Living life with almost no possessions, only experiences, stories, and friends is amazing. You feel free. We can go anywhere on the globe at the drop of a hat. We’ve met tons of new friends that offer couches, beds, or places to put our cots.

Taking time off isn’t a real option. There’s so much out there to see and do, and so little time to do it. I now speak four foreign languages, with skill levels ranging from “barely functional” to “passable”. I’ve got to get them all down.

But at the same time, I have to admit that Life Nomadic isn’t without it’s drawbacks. I miss my family and my friends. I’m not at a loss for friends, especially with Todd around, but my friends in Austin are amazing and I miss spending time with them. My family is really important to me, and I don’t see them.

When I left the US I had a strong anti-American sentiment. Not that I wished harm on the US or anything, but I’ve come to realize that although it does have many serious flaws, there is a lot there that you don’t find elsewhere. Austin is an especially great town.

There are other small inconveniences as well. When I’m in new countries I am distracted and I want to go see the place I’m in. Austin is comfortable - I could sit in my RV for a week and focus on work.

I still get a lot done, but some of my best work has been done when I lock myself in for a week and just crunch.

I don’t say all this to complain, or to take away from the trip. If you followed us around, most days you’d see Todd and I in some strange tourist-free neighborhood high fiving each other with huge grins on our faces, saying, “Man. This is the life.”

And it is the life.

But Life Nomadic 2008 is a rough draft. We didn’t base it on years of experience, ours or someone else’s, but rather on what we thought would be fun.

Now we have a bit more insight and can make some tweaks to make it even better in 2009. I started writing a different post and had a revelation, which I typed out as I thought of it. Instead of rewriting it, I’ll paste it here.

The toughest decisions are decisions where both options are so good that you don’t want to give either up. At least for me.

If I had all of the money in the world I’d do three months in foreign countries, and then three weeks or so back in Austin. Wash, rinse, repeat.

Actually, now that I think of it… I CAN do that.

I’ve gotten really good at figuring out fares. I can easily beat AirTreks and even Kayak.com a lot of the time.

Let’s see. I spent $2900 in airfare for approximately 6 months. It actually covers a bit more than that, but leaves me stranded in Europe. I have actually probably spent another $500 or so in miscellaneous flights through SE Asia, but that’s not a regular charge.

So let’s say $6k a year doing it the way I’m doing it now. Manageable and already accounted for.

I can find a round trip to Japan for $1000 (on a bad day), a round trip to South America for $700, and a round trip to Europe for $800. Those are roughly peak season rates.

That’s only $2500 a year. Add in another $500 for flights to nearby countries per trip and I’m still under what I’m paying now.

I have no desire to get an apartment or a house but I could either stay with family and friends OR get an RV! There is a model for $20k that gets 20mpg and is a little smaller than my old one. Then I would have no expenses other than food when I’m in Austin.

PLUS I’ve been wanting to spend some time in LA. At 20mpg I can go there for one of my three week segments.

I have several people in Austin who have land and offered to let me keep my RV on it when I’m gone. I’m sure I could work something out. Ooh, and I could get an electric skateboard again. The RV and the skateboard are the only two possessions I miss.

So, I’ve had this idea for about 12 hours now. It was so exciting to me that I wasn’t able to sleep. As soon as Todd woke up to go to the bathroom I blurted it out to him and got him onboard.

Who knows if it’s what we’ll actually do, but it sounds like a great way to have our cakes and eat them too.

I was telling Todd earlier today that I have a very distinct method of making decisions.

I think of some idea that sounds fun, then whip myself into a frenzy thinking about all of the positive sides of the idea and ignoring all of the negative sides. Within half an hour I convince myself it’s the best idea I’ve ever had, and I pull the trigger.

That’s how I moved to LA, that’s how I bought my RV, and pretty much everything else I’ve ever done.

Here are some of the awesome benefits I’ve thought of:

1. I get my skateboard and RV back. I asked Todd, “do you know what the very best part of this plan is?” He replied that it was having skateboards. Exactly what I was thinking.

2. We can pack selectively for different areas. Going to Africa? Probably don’t need the rain pants. Going to Tokyo? Bring that skateboard!

3. We can take more trips with other people. Tons of my friends travel, so I can consider where they’re going and plan to meet them. When planning a year in advance this isn’t really possible. PLUS maybe some of our friends will come for three months stints since they’re a lot easier to commit to than a whole year.

4. We can be in Austin for the best times of the year. Skip the three hottest months and the three coldest.

5. We will spend more time in NYC, LA, and SF because most good travel deals come out of those cities. Get a Jetblue or Southwest ticket, stay in the city for a week, and then head out.

6. We can wait around for good deals. In our three week down periods we’ll scour the travel deal lists. Good price on a flight to Morocco? Let’s go there and check out Africa. This will add more adventure and save us money.

7. Todd and I become independent. Maybe I want to go to Europe and he wants to spend some extra time in Japan. No problem… we’ll just meet up for the next chunk. A year traveling alone is expensive and not entirely appealing. Three months is cake.

The one downside I see is that it may be easy to just sit in Austin. I don’t want to ever think “I’ll skip this trip… I don’t want to spend $700 right now.”

I’m overwhelmingly happy with what I spend my money on, but the one area that I’ve never had any regrets is travel. No one ever regrets traveling, no matter how much it costs.

My solution will be to have a rule that if I’m in Austin for 4 weeks, I have to buy a ticket SOMEWHERE out of the country on day 28 for the next week.

I’m really excited about this new plan. What a life. We’re on a plane right now and will have been to four countries in the span of 7 hours. Vietnam, Thailand, Macau, and Hong Kong.

We don’t plan far ahead, so we never know exactly when we’ll be able to buy acceptable food. Batteries are the same way. We’re on a 32 hour train ride that spans two nights from Saigon in South Vietnam to Hanoi in North Vietnam.

It’s the second night now, so it’s time to burn off my batteries which I haven’t really used much of yet.

Todd’s writing a story about the amazing journey we had to Cambodia, so I’ll pick up from there.

On the train to Phnom Penh, amongst other people, we met Andrew, a writer for Lonely Planet. We stumbled out of the train into the blinding daylight (doubly blinding for me because I forgot my sunglasses in Taiwan), and got into a tuk tuk, which is like a motorcycle and wagon combined, to head to breakfast.

Cambodia was different that I had expected. If I’ve learned one thing on this trip, it’s that my assumptions about countries are universally bound to be wrong. If I’ve learned two things, the second would be that everyone overstates the danger present in each country.

For some reason I assumed Cambodia would be a third world wasteland where we were in perpetual danger of being robbed. It’s poor, of course, but something I’ve realized is that poor doesn’t equate with bad living conditions.

Food costs next to nothing because there’s plenty of land and cheap labor to produce it. Houses are self made productions that are small but functional. Transportation is scaled down to be very cheap. Living on a few dollars a day seems horrific, but that’s only when you think of living in America or a similar place for a few dollars a day.

Anyway, the city of Phnom Penh is actually quite nice. The streets are packed with low powered motorbikes, scooters, and tuk tuks. Their way of driving is different than ours. It’s slower and far more chaotic. If there’s room to squeeze by, then the oncoming traffic lane becomes a good option. Giant roundabouts with huge statues in the middle have schools of two wheeled vehicles swarming around them.

A big river runs through the middle of the city, but right now most of the view of it is blocked off by construction barriers. I’m not sure what they’re building, but the signs say that the Japanese have donated whatever it is. That’s nice of them.

Guided by Andrew, we went to a restaurant called the FCC. Todd and I each ordered two or three sandwiches and an equal number of smoothies and fruit juices. Andrew was meeting a friend so he just had coffee.

Before parting ways Andrew suggested a hotel called “Scandinavia”.

Our tuk tuk brought is there, and as we fumbled with the exchange rate (1 USD to 4000 Cambodian Rial), a man flew past us in a yellow 4×4, doing a wheelie on the slight ramp into the courtyard.

4×4s are street legal there, or rather no one checks or cares if things are street legal.

We went through the courtyard and up the steps to a bar which doubled as the reception desk.

“We’d like a room?” we wondered aloud to the bartender.

“Sure thing. It’s $50 including free wifi, breakfast, and I’ll buy you guys a drink, too.”

He turned out to be Erik, the owner. He got sick of his job in the DVD division of New Line Cinema, and decided to move to Cambodia and buy a small hotel. Fair enough.

The price was a bit more than we wanted to pay, considering we were in a city where hostel beds were $3, but after 24 hours on a train we were excited about the prospect of a good shower and decent internet..

“I’ll show you the room. If it works for you, then great. If not I’ll help you find somewhere else.”

In the room I pulled out my phone to check the internet.

“Ahh, I used to have that same phone. You guys are into gadgets, huh? Check out Surefire flashlights when you have the chance.”

I had, in fact, checked out Surefire flashlights in the past. I had one of them in Austin, but we found even better flashlights while in Tokyo and had them shipped to us.

“Surefires are pretty cool, but we can do one better.”

From its holster on the strap of my backpack I pulled out the mighty Fenix L1D and showed it to him.

“There’s no way this is brighter than my surefire.”

It was, by ten lumens. I know this because of the product literature online, but also because fifteen minutes later he had retrieved his flashlight from his office and we were having a flash-light-off in our darkened room.

“Wow. That really is brighter.”

We’d made a friend. We told him of our peculiar diet and he suggested a restaurant down the street called “Nature and Sea”.

It was the type of restaurant that makes you feel like a regular the first time you visit because it’s so inaccessible. First you take a staircase on the side of a building, then walk around the corner on a thin deck to another staircase. Make it to the top and you’re rewarded with an open air cafe that looks out to a Cambodian temple and the bizarre traffic patterns around it.

We were grateful for the usual Southeast Asian assortment of fruit shakes and fresh fruit juices, and surprised at the rest. The menu was dominated by buckwheat crepes and fish and chips. In fact, there were at least 5 different types of fish and chips, 4 more than I knew existed.

We ordered buckwheat crepes full of vegetables, salads, and then more crepes. The staff was audible shocked at how much we ate - a trend that certainly didn’t start in Cambodia.

Afterwards we went back to the hotel to catch up on work and e-mails, too tired from the train ride to go out and explore.

The next day, after another gluttonous visit to Nature and Sea, we headed to S21, a school turned prison camp turned museum. Genocide museums aren’t the types of things you clamor to go to, but they seem important to see when you’re in the area.

The transformation from school to prison camp was visibly hasty and incomplete, but the transformation to museum was even less comprehensive. That’s what made it a good museum.

In the first building we entered what was at one time a classroom and saw a rusty metal bed in the middle. A chain was still attached to it, and a sharp torture stick was sitting next to it. No ropes or plexiglas separated us from the bed. You could walk around it and even sit on it if you wanted.

The only thing that had changed in 30 years was that there was now a picture on the wall showing that very bed with a prisoner chained to it.

These rooms were for torture under Pol Pot’s orders. Another building housed the cells. They were crudely made of either bricks or wood, and were also left intact. I went inside one, closed the door, and looked out the barred window to imagine what it would actually be like to be stuck there.

Another room housed pictures of each prisoner taken when he was brought to the camp, and yet another had piles of their skulls locked up in glass cabinets.

At the end was a gift shop with a pushy shopkeeper whose demeanor would have seemed more at home at Disneyland.

We left the museum and headed back to the hotel. Once there we realized that we were somehow five days behind schedule. This happened because the train we took only ran on Sunday. We had wanted to leave much earlier, but were unwilling to skip the train.

So we quickly figured out the best way to get to Vietnam (bus, although a more leisurely trip down the Mekong river would have been better if we had 2 days) and how to get to Hong Kong afterwards (plane to Bangkok, plane to Macau, then a ferry to Hong Kong). We booked our tickets and then dashed out the door to meet Doug’s friend Alicia whose job at the State Department just moved her to Phnom Penh.

Alicia had brought a couple Marine friends from the Embassy and greeted us at a Middle Eastern restaurant near our hotel. We made our way up two steep staircases to the roof where we ate hummus, talked about our trip, and learned of the bizarre security precautions the Marines had to take.

Afterwards we went to a bar near the river. Cambodia is hot during the day, but at night the weather is perfect. That reminds me of being in Austin, where one of my favorite feelings is leaving an air conditioner chilled restaurant at night and feeling the warm air outside.

Our hosts were startled at the excitement Todd and I had for finding squash soup on the menu. Between the two of us we ate five bowls as well as a few fresh juices. If bars in the US had fresh juice I’d go out a lot more.

Beggars came up to us and asked for money. We gave them the little baguettes which had come with our soups but gone uneaten.

Two cute kids came up in Cambodia’s national dress, by which I mean brightly colored pajamas that everyone wears all day, and started talking to us. They tried to sell books, but our unwillingness to buy them coupled with our smiles and friendliness caused their sales pitches to give way to a friendly competition between the two.

The rapped, danced, sang, and drummed on their chests. One of them called himself “MC No Have Rice”. Their English was good and it was obvious that they were sharp kids.

“Why don’t you buy books?”

“Because I can’t read,” answered Todd.

“Then how did you order your soup?”

After they’d given up asking we gave them $5 because they’d really made our night.

With our window to get a decent amount of sleep before our 6am bus closing, we said our goodbyes and headed to the hotel to sleep. Two days wasn’t enough time to really get to know Cambodia, but it was a good enough introduction that I wouldn’t mind finding myself back there again some time.