Tara's Travels

So you know The Hangover movie where these crazy guys have some potent drink, have a wild night, lose a person and the next day have to figure out what happened? Well I think that just happened to me and I am shocked by the fact that I can still be such a bafoon. Here's what happened... I have been living in Cambodia for about a year and am leaving for a short time, so for my last night in town I went for dinner with some friends... sounds normal right? Well after dinner it boiled down to just a few and since I had an early flight (6am) one of my friends offered to drive me to the airport if I want to stay up the whole night and have some more drinks, of course this was already on my agenda so I gladly agreed. I figured we would just have a casual night until 4am when I would have to get ready to leave..... but this is me and I should have known myself better than to believe I would take it easy! The evening before a friend came to visit from the States and we danced ...

Now that I have been driving more in Cambodia, and actually have a commute to work (15 minutes) I think I can call myself an Asian Driver! I know how the system works now, even though it may seem that there is no system. I know how to maneuver my way to the front of the traffic light, and honk at every intersection; I even have my poncho ready for when it rains. So now that I find driving a little boring again, there are a few games I play to stay entertained on the road. The first, is an activity I see in movies when a policeman is being trained and all these cardboard criminals pop out that he has to shoot. This is me driving down the street when people come at me from all directions except I have to avoid them all at the last minute without crashing. People drive frontwards and backwards, on either side of the street and at all speeds, popping out of places I didn't know existed.... coconut carts in the middle of the road, ladders on all types of vehicles and motos wi...

Cambodia has a lot of hippy foreigners building things in the middle of nowhere, and I have been hoping to join them (at least temporarily) along my nomadic adventures. Since arriving in Cambodia last year, I have hunted down a few projects using natural and recycled materials around the country but haven't yet gotten my hands dirty. A while ago, when I went down to the coast, I visited a few natural building projects involving earthships and bottles building, and was planning on volunteering with them for a few days whenever I had a chance.... but that never happened! So recently I saw a posting on Facebook about a different natural building project asking for volunteers for an earthbag library, and luckily I had some free time! I am interested in more sustainable and healthy building options after working with a straw bale architecture firm in Canada. I researched other building techniques with earth and helped design a few structures with earthbags but we never got...

As I went to meet my friend in Bangkok, it must have been my hundrenth trip or so and not even my first time in Bangkok. It was my friend's first big international holiday, and he started joking before I left about himself being a beginner traveler (level zero) and myself being more experienced one (level ten)..... this was until I arrived at our hotel, said hello and then announced that I had lost my passport! I have made a lot of stupid mistakes while traveling, falling for scams or going to the wrong airport, misinterpreting dates and directions, but after thirty some countries I have managed to hang on to both of my passports. Unfortunately for me, this trip was very short, only three days in Thailand and I was getting nervous that I would be trapped and miss my onward travel. Luckily my passport wasn't exactly lost, it was just no longer in my possession, but I knew precisely where I had left it. After arriving in Bangkok, I had no Thai money and went to the...

Most places I visit, I don't often drive. My modes of transportation always varies but usually I am a passenger on a train or bus if I am not walking or cycling in the designated bike lane. In Phnom Penh I eventually realized that if tuktuk drivers don't understand your location, they just take you to where they think you want to go. This made me want to drive myself around and break my passerby pattern.... so I hired a moto (scooter) and then had to learn to drive again, this time like a local. First of all you have to get a Cambodian drivers license, which nobody does so I didn't either, good start! Rental agencies take your passport to ensure you bring it back and leave the legalities to the cops when they pull you over ( see my post about corruption ).  I am not sure if people here ever learn to drive or they just get behind the wheel one day, just like most 8 year old tuktuk drivers I see. Driving around Phnom Penh, the capital city, the average speed is a...