Throughout May we traversed the length of Vietnam and parts of Cambodia, including the mighty Angkor Wat, with yet another great group of fellow travellers.

So many highlights but Sapa and Halong Bay stand out for me as two must-see places before you die and once you get to Hanoi there is every chance that may happen. The traffic is deranged.

Our local guides were fabulous including a one-man entertainment machine called Hai who serenaded us through Saigon and the Mekong.

Perhaps my favourite story of the trip came from Tien, our Hue and Hoi An guide.

She was telling us about people who live in the Vietnam countryside. Typically deprived of any formal education they often have no idea about family planning.
A Government representative went out to the villages to show them how to use contraceptives. He demonstrated the use of a condom by rolling it onto his thumb. They seemed to grasp the idea ok.

A year later the birth rate had not changed despite a huge increase in condom sales.

During a follow up visit the representative inquired as to why the use of condoms had had no affect. One of the farmers stood up and said he always rolled the condom on his thumb before sex, exactly as he had been instructed to. Perhaps the condoms were faulty?
The representative then explained on which part of the body the condom should be used.

A year later and the birth rate was still high. A follow up visit by the Government rep uncovered another obstacle to success. As one farmer described.
“The little plastic bulge at the end of the condom gets in the way and feels uncomfortable, so most of us just cut it off”.

Vietnam was hot, damn hot.
One comment from one of our group during the hottest part of the hottest day.
“It’s so hot that even the beggars are too lethargic to come over and bother us”.

Cambodia, unlike many of its Asian neighbours, is not prone to natural disasters.
No earthquakes, tidal waves or typhoons.
Unfortunately its recent history includes a human disaster of monstrous proportions.

In 1975 a group of psychopaths took over the country and began a systematic slaughter of their own people. Three million souls died horribly for no sane reason.
Like Hitler’s Germany, this genocidal nightmare is beyond comprehension. When it touches you you just start to cry.

Today the people of Cambodia are brave and brilliant. We really like Cambodia circa 2013.

When our group left Phnom Penh and flew back to Australia, Veronica and I set off for a few days of R&R in the southern Cambodian town of Kampot.
We purchased bus tickets and the irony licked my bitch like a Hebrew slurping Haagen Dazs, they gave us the front seat.
I’ve always thought of the front seat of a bus as a cross between the office chair and detention. Last place you want to be in a 12 car pile up. Never viewed it as contestable real estate. We travelled in fear like watching a kid taking on the Minions of Astroid 9 and hoping he makes it through to the next level.

The next level was Kampot, a sleepy riverside town full of crumbling French colonial shophouses and a sensational local market. Nobody really gave a shit whether we were there or not –  the ideal destination for anyone jaded by the rape and pillage mentality of the main tourist arteries.

We checked into a riverfront boutique hotel called Rikitikitavi. Arguably the best all round value place we’ve ever stayed. Magnificently run establishment with extraordinary staff.

Started chatting to a guy over lunch on our fourth day at Rikitikitavi. He asked us what we would recommend to do in the area. We suggested the twilight river cruise. We had done this two nights earlier with a boatman called Mutley ( no kidding ) and both the sunset and the fireflies on the banks after dark were stunning.
Kampot pepper plantations are interesting and there’s a temple inside a cave that pre-dates Angkor by 500 years and there are NO tourists. The countryside is rugged and in the villages it’s like stepping back in time.
There’s a huge frenetic morning market that a white man can walk through without ever hearing the word ‘hullo’.
On the riverside, heading south out of town the shrimp boats unload their catch at 6 every morning. The locals set up a makeshift market to sell the shrimps wholesale. It inspired me to watch Forest Gump again.

The guy at the next table thanked us for our information but before he left I asked him what he did.
He told us he lives in Saigon, his name is Mark Boyer and he makes a living from his travel website – Rusty Compass.

Now here’s the irony. The reason we chose Kampot, the reason we chose Rikitikitavi, was because of the Rusty Compass website. Apparently he had only been to Kampot once before but gleaned enough from that visit to post some good information. Having learned much about the area from him, not only was it a crazy coincidence to bump into him but to then be giving him advice about the area was delicious irony. Just another reason to never stop travelling.

Kampot is a strange brew of local farmers, fisherman, market sellers, old fashioned shop retailers and embittered expats called Pot Pats.
It’s impossible to hurry. It’s hot and there’s nowhere to go.
The hotels and cafes range from dives that even German backpackers might think twice about, all the way up to condemned buildings with running water. Something for everyone on the new hippy trail between Sihanoukville and the Mekong.

Sitting at a Kampot cafe I watched a gecko working the illuminated Illy sign like a sticky clawed Call Girl baiting a street lamp. Her clients fly in and die for the pleasure.
Opposite there’s a cheap pub with travellers plugging ipads into cracked plastic wall sockets festooned beneath the same Bob Marley poster their long haired parents may have paid homage to. Eclectic, happy, hippy dulled by decades of dust. It’s a time warp that nobody is really trapped in. The backpackers are mildly amused by what they assume to be retro while the locals perpetuate the 1974 Lonely Planet shoplift to finance their belief in the unchangeable Western mind.
I am just grateful that my dignity prohibits any more than a furtive glance at the Reggae Hotel.

I wanted to buy a flash drive memory stick in order to copy some Khmer music from a local guy’s computer. Resorting to charades once again to compensate for my lack of legible English, my fingers demonstrated how you would insert the little USB device into a computer. I’m sure the young man working behind the counter thought I wanted to have sex with him, because he ran away.

Another day, another village. After 4 nights in Kampot we travelled to the seaside town of Kep for 2 more nights. It’s only a 20 km journey but the locals call it the PGA. Some of the pot holes have flags but most are bunkers. It’s a tough course.

We stayed at the Spring Valley Resort in Kep and we were the only guests.
There are bungalows, rooms, suites, a swimming pool, dining room, extensive tropical gardens, 12 staff and us.

We had to wake up the little girl to check in.
I said, ” We have a reservation “.
She said, ” I know “.
I think she had been waiting for us since February.

I felt like we were in one of those post apocalyptic movies where the human race has been reduced to a handful of living beings. We wanted to get away from it all and it seemed we had succeeded.

On the first morning, word obviously got around that THE guests were coming for breakfast.
The staff quickly maned their stations and stood there attentively until we needed a coffee or an egg scrambled. It was hilarious. Once we left the dining room, the staff all raced off, donned casual clothes and started whipper snipping the garden.

We had our own private tuk tuk driver too. His name was Bun Hoarth but we renamed him Ben Hur. He would be waiting for us at the gate with his chariot to chauffeur us around the deserted streets of Kep.

Veronica and I are now back in Penang after our month in Vietnam & Cambodia.

Upon our return we were pleasantly surprised to find the house in good shape.
Unlike in Melbourne, here the forces of nature can act quickly against the will of man.

We entered the front door and sullied through to the back with an ever growing sense of control.
Not too dirty, no rising damp on the walls, tiles not too crusty with salt deposits, no tiles fallen off the roof, no puddles of water around the air-well, inside trees still alive, no trees growing out of the walls, mould in the kitchen no worse.

On first inspection we were just a little bit chuffed with ourselves.
Taming one of these old shophouses is not so difficult.

Then Veronica opened the kitchen cabinet.

Ever had a surprise birthday party? You know, one of those ones where you walk into an
empty room and suddenly the lights go on and 25 ass-holes jump out and yell SURPRISE.

When opened, the cabinet literally exploded with termites as they fell or flew out to lay siege in the kitchen.

The best bit was watching a usually refined Lotus Bud bellowing expletives that would make a politician blush.

We will never win the war but there is no sign of surrender from the allied Australian forces.