Tag bad planning
Last weekend, Yini and I planned to go see the famous beehive fireworks that kick off the lantern festival each year in Yanshui. We failed to actually see the fireworks but went to Chiayi and Tainan all the same. What happened was that I checked the date for the beehive fireworks and saw that it would be this weekend so we figured we could go see the fireworks on Saturday evening. What I failed to pay attention to was the fact that the main event was on Friday evening and that the whole thing ended early Saturday morning. I only … Read the rest
So today has mostly been a waste of time. The plan was to go up to Anlong Veng near the Thai border and visit the house of Ta Mok, one of Pol Pot’s butchers. The day after we would rent a motorbike and make a day trip to the Preah Vihear temples.
We got to Anlong Veng by taxi (for some reason there is no public transport) and quickly found a guesthouse. Despite the rain that had started to fall we headed over to Ta Mok’s house which turned out to be pretty much nothing, just a few old buildings … Read the rest
I’m looking out over the valley below and the mountains rising up on the other side. The slopes are all covered with terraced fields making them look like the sides of giant stepped pyramids. It’s late in the year now, the rice has been harvested and the paddies lie barren and empty, just the prickly stalks sticking up from the mud. The mist lies like a thick blanket over everything and two days of drizzle has made things all damp and soggy. Standing here I imagine how it would look earlier in the year, just before harvest, the golden yellow … Read the rest
We knew pretty early on that we could not move through Serbia due Yini needing a visa, so yesterday we took a bus to Montenegro to try to circumnavigate that problem. Unfortunately visa free entry did not equal hassle free entry. Yini got rejected at the boarder because we did not send a fax to tell them she was coming. So with a distressed girlfriend and in sweltering heat we started walking the few kilometers across the borderlands back towards the Croatian boarder.
As luck would have it, waving my thumb at passing cars paid off, and we managed to … Read the rest
Yesterday was wholly dedicated to moving from one place to another. The original plan was to leave Vis in the morning and head for the island of Korcula and from there move on to Dubrovnik. Unfortunately this is only possible over the course of several days, with careful planning. With less careful planning it can take up to one week. However, we were set on going to Korcula so we headed back to Split with the ferry, waited there for a few hours then headed out again to Vela Luka on Korcula. By the time we got there it was … Read the rest