Exciting news! The Bumpkin word is spreading!
I’m proud to announce that I have been offered a job with 2Backpackers.com & CoupleTravelTips.com as a weekly contributor. I am honoured to be a part of such cool websites and hopefully all my travel experience on the road with my partner, Roscoe will provide great fodder for you all.
Here is my Introduction to the team
Roscoe’s photos of our trip to Cambodia’s famous Angkor temples tell a beautiful story. His journal is fantastic and the link to the photos are a must see.
Though a truly phenomenal World Heritage Site, we were saddened by some rather shoddy restoration work that seems to be going on recently. You can imagine how surprised we were to find that half of the most iconic temple, Angkor Wat itself, was covered by green tarpaulin due to works being done!
Despite this, the site is captivating to walk around. My favourite temple had to be Bayon – the huge faces carved into the stone and the ancient trees bursting out of the rock was exquisite.
Click here to read Roscoe’s brilliant article and view his accompanying photos.
To my delight, Cambodia turned out to be a culinary wonder. Around Sihanoukville, in particular, the traditional seafood dishes are cheap, fresh and delicious!
Along the waterfront, I tried my first ever barracuda, cooked lightly in garlic and heaps of thin strands of ginger. This is a very popular way to serve fish in this country and you have to be a real ginger fan to appreciate it. Maybe a little overpowering for some but I can never get enough ginger or garlic for that matter, so this went down a treat.
Sihanoukville is also popular for its seafood BBQ’s. At a restaurant on Otres Beach called Why Not – with the most lively waiter imaginable, I indulged in a giant plate of barbequed squid. I was a little nervous ordering this dish as I’d had some terribly cooked squid in Goa and had never gotten over the ordeal of chewing on car tyres.
Fortunately, the aroma as soon as the plate was set down in front of me, assured that this meal was going to be divine. Huge billowing rings of squid and tentacles were cooked to perfection in garlic and a light dusting of seasoning.
Probably Cambodia’s most famous dish, is the Amok. This is a fragrant coconut curry served with a very unusual green vegetable, a little like seaweed. I had mine with flaky white fish and it was glorious. So different to the highly spiced mackerel Indian curries of my childhood but just as good.
The best thing to snack on in Sihanoukville was so phenomenal, I did that cheeky thing of eating it too quickly and failing to get a photo to serve this blog. Oops! Sunkissed women along the beach, carry trolleys with huge baskets of deep fried shellfish, probably crayfish or large scampi in a spice batter so melt in the mouth delicious that you could literally eat the entire thing whole, shell and all. They only cost a couple of dollars but were the most gorgeous thing in the world.
You can get amazing, interesting food all over Cambodia, not just its seafood selection along its beaches. In Phnom Penh, I had a rich soup stew that reminded me very much of my favourite stew in Ho Chi Minh City. This time huge chunks of beef sat amongst thin noodles, a light spiced broth and fresh white onions on top making the whole thing come to life.
I’m sorry to say, for my readers amusement, I did not indulge in any Cambodian ‘delicacies’ of deep fried spiders, crickets and what not. I fear I should leave this task to Bear Grylls. I will stick to things non-bug like if you please…
When people think of Cambodia, stunning beaches aren’t usually the first thing that springs to mind. Through the travelling grapevine, we had heard that Sihanoukville’s beaches were just as gorgeous as Thailand’s. We had to check it out for ourselves.
Have a read on Gap Daemon today.
As always, I managed to eat my way around Vietnam’s second biggest city. I had delighted in what the capital city of Hanoi had to offer and I was just as excited by how Saigon (aka Ho chi Minh City) would fill my belly.
Like most days, I started with my favourite fruit for breakfast, the glorious Longan. Very similar to a lychee but with a tougher skin and a large seed, these make a very therapeutic way to start the day. Slowly prising them out of their skins and into my mouth became a little ritual of pleasure in the morning.
I had made it my mission to find myself a bowl of Bo Kho, Vietnam’s rich beef stew for lunch. I followed my nose and found a fantastic roadside cafe selling nothing but huge bowls of stews and noodles. Through the help of the photographs of the dishes on the menu, I picked what looked like the richest deepest stew I could find. You fellow foodies, tummies will rumble here, as this was the BEST soup I’ve ever had in my life. It combined both my love of stews and noodle soups and resulted in a dish that I never wanted to end.
Large chunks of beef, flaked straight off the bone, were surrounded by a sauce, thick and almost gelatinous, deep red and divine. Aromas of star anise and dried chilli steamed off the bowl. Wide noodles bulked the dish out and fresh wafer thin slices of red onion on top provided the crunch that the dish really needed. I was in heaven.
To round up the day, dinner had to be seafood. We strolled the streets in search of good food and beer and found a roadside eatery with an array of seafood on offer. The choices were fabulous.
Knowing how fresh the produce would be, we sampled succulent crab claws mixed with chilli and lots of holy basil.
Tiny scallops adorned with garlic and chopped peanuts.
The dish that really stood out was razor clams in chilli oil, garlic and basil. These were unbelievably good.
I had only ever tried English razor clams before. Though smaller than the English variety, these were magnificently moorish and packed full of flavour. There’s not many places in the world where you can indulge in such a superb selection of seafood for the price of 150,000 VND (£5). Makes you want to stay, if only for the food!
In one day, I learnt more about the Vietnam War than a year of studying it at A Level. The War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Minh City is an essential part of any trip to the country.
Have a read here
If you’re anything like us, adrenaline junkies and big kids at heart, when you read the section of your Lonely Planet guide about Nha Trang, the first thing your eye will go to are the words ‘Vietnam’s biggest waterpark’. It’s only a small paragraph but it jumped off the page for us.
We were only in Nha Trang for a couple of days and getting the chance to go on a cable car to get to this fun packed VinPearl Land and indulging in countless stomach dropping slides was a must.
The park costs 330,000 VND (£11 each). To get to the island you have to take a phenomenally long and high cable car from the mainland. I had never been on one of these proportions.
Roscoe’s vertigo wasn’t too happy about the experience but it served well for my amusement. It lasted about fifteen minutes which is an awfully long time to be suspended in a metal container weighing tons over the ocean!
Reaching the island was a relief!
We were so excited about the waterpark that we skipped any of the non-water rides and got straight into our swimmers. We ended up missing out on these rides, much to my annoyance, as they had all shut when we left the wet area later that night.
The island has huge slides of every description and a beautiful white sand beach where we snorkelled and drank beer. It provided great respite in between bursts of adrenaline.
The scariest ride for me was the bowl slide where you shoot down a tiny flume, so small you can’t sit up, water shoots up your nose threatening to blast your brain out your ears and to end you are shot into a giant bowl which swills you around like a coin before being plopped out into a pool. I needed a sit down after that one!
Roscoe was very brave indeed and did the wedgie inducing largest slide. I sheepishly watched from the sidelines as he went sliding down at formula one speeds.
When we were thoroughly wiped out we took ourselves to the arcade area. English theme parks take note, here all the arcades are included in your initial price of entry. Unlike back home, where you pay through the nose to enter and then have to pay extra for a round of Evil Dead or whatever, here you can run riot for hours as all the machines are free for all.
This day was worth every penny. If you’re in Nha Trang and fancy running around like the big kid that you are, then do it!
Yet another unforgettable day on our trip. A visit to a small village in Hoi An where we learnt first hand how the war was dealt with and how life goes on.
Have a read over on Gap Daemon today.
The horny folks over at Travel Sex Life have kindly posted my warning piece on the dangers of Thailand’s infamous Full Moon Party. Click here to read.
Check out their cool new site which opens up on all things sexual, taboo and travel related.
There’s so much to do in Hoi An, for backpackers or holidaymakers, this stunning ancient town is a must-see in Vietnam.
Read more over on Gap Daemon today
