Last call from Cambodia

Soos sa dae (that means Hallo in Cambodian)!
Is it any wonder that we never picked up the language?


One of our Cambodian friend’s baby is named Urb (that’s it Urb! sounds more like a bodily noise than a little baby's name) things sure are different over here.  But as much as we have enjoyed the motos with pigs and the complete lack of road rules, it is time to move on. 

Talking of road rules had a great adventure the other day when our tuk tuk (see the picture) went hurtling into

the side of a truck that cut across the road for no good reason.  Marilu screamed, I grunted or urb’d and the tuk tuk driver leapt off his bike leaving his driverless passengers (us) to collide with the truck.  Needless to say we all survived including the slightly bloodied driver. Thought we would put some pictures of the things we see on the road every day for the rest of this blog...



Anyway it is time to move on and after going to a recruiting fair and receiving 5 good offers including 2 schools with no license and one in Karachi, Pakistan where the local bike riding group is taken every 6 weeks (under armed guard) for a ride along the beach, we decided to go to China and a place called Chengdu.  The greatest thing about the school is that it has 15 teachers and this year 29 students. That’s the total student body, should be interesting.  The link to the school is http://www.lis-chengdu.com if you want to check it out.  Chengdu is the home of Pandas and the gateway to Tibet and the Himalayas.  If I sound like a tourism brochure it is to let you think about visiting.  After a dismal showing while in Cambodia (my parents twice and the girlfriend of some friend’s son were our only visitors) perhaps China will be more appealing to our well travelled friends.  We need you to visit so that we don’t feel bad about freeloading off of you when we see you.  Or when we take advantage of the ski chalets, Cornish cottages, Island retreats, Florida beach houses, Utah riverfront abodes, big ass houses with swimming pools and theater rooms or any other of the cornucopia of second and first homes that you lot have.

Well that’s it from Cambodia, we leave for China from Las Vegas on July 23rd and by that time England will be the new World Cup winners and you will have thought seriously about a Chinese meal at the local shop in Chengdu.  Have a great summer Simon and Marilu

Happy Chinese New Year!

Happy Christmas, Happy New Year and all those holidays we have missed. We are getting more and more lax about writing in the blog. Mostly due to the internet issues here - it becomes so frustrating it is easy to pop open a beverage and sit on the balcony rather than fight the Cambodian snail pace upload/download. But anyway, we have been continuing the adventures, the most recent was Christmas and New Year's in Tanzania.



This is the view from our bungalow on Zanzibar where we spent Christmas. It was a wonderful place, full of windy narrow alleys in Stone Town and gorgeous beaches like this around the island. The one downside was there was no power to the island. A main transformer had blown and the replacment part blew as soon as it was installed. The bungalows and some hotels had generators for a/c at night but the diesel was running short and the locals couldn't get fresh water as the pumps are all electric. Makes you appreciate the little things.

























Then it was on to the mainland and safari! We saw the big 5 but also had a wonderful time with the little guys like these - warthogs at play! We had a wonderful guide/driver who is Massai and a great "tracker". We saw things that many other groups did not see. The highlight of which was a cheetah jumping up on our land rover and then coming up to the open top and peering in at us inside.
Click on the video link at the bottom of this post - I finally got video to upload!






As good as our guide was..... he got us well and truly stuck in the Serengheti. We tried to dig out, along came another land rover and he got stuck trying to pull us out and finally a 3rd one come and freed the other guy and dropped us off at camp. (6 hours) It was pretty cool to be stuck in the middle of the migration - the animals left us alone but were out there just beyond view.






We will leave you with a few more images from Tanzania - a place we would highly recommend as a safari/holiday destination. We are happy to give more details and recommendations for those of you planning a trip.

We did splurge and go "high end" (Marilu's dream Hemmingway safari) and it was definitely you get what you pay for experience. Well worth it!

We are still in job search mode - haven't secured a place for next year yet. We will let you know so you can plan your visit early... there are still a few months left to see Cambodia with the Burdens. Any takers?



Till next time, Marilu and Simon