It’s been hard I must admit. Trying to exist in a society that seems to value the knowledge of who won the footy premiership in 1967 over the ins and outs of string theory. Trying to fit into a place that thinks you are a dork unless you have mastered the art of yelling “Aussie! Aussie! Aussie! Oi! Oi! Oi!” whilst simultaneously wearing short shorts, drinking a VB and eating a meat pie. Major sporting events, the lifeblood of Melbourne and Australia pass me by, only noticed by the flash of advertising promoting a free fake handlebar moustache after drinking only 50 slabs of beer (something to do with cricket and the burnt ashes of some stumps or something?).

Today everything changed. Today I not only became a true Australian but I also became a Man in every sense of the word (including the senses that can not even be expressed in the English language in fact).

Today… I bought a BARBIQUE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!! AND NOT A SINGLE BURNER EITHER, THIS IS A TWO BURNER WITH OPTIONAL WOK BURNER ATTACHMENT!!!!!!

Yeah it’s fuckin great man, I am gonna cook sausages and steaks and stir fry stuff and prawns and kababs and marinated chicken things and lobsters and steaks and steaks and also sausages.

After I bought it, I was walking down the street and all these girls were just looking at me like I was a giant Adonis of manhood. Rox got a bit jealous at first but then even she realised that they couldn’t help themselves. The bbq smoke that was coming off my clothes was like an unstoppable force, making any woman withing 1007 km of me unable to even walk properly.

We were on Chapel St for the opening of Rox’s brother’s new gym and I had to quickly pop into a shop on the way home to buy new jeans because everything in my pants had suddenly expanded to man size! It was crazy and it was lucky that we got home in one piece after all of those ladies (the ones that could walk still somehow) started chasing us down the street! (Rox had to bash a couple of em. She’s good like that :))

Anyway we made it back home safe and sound so I decided to write a post quickly before the fingers on my new man hands grew so large that they began to look like fresh organic beef sausages and I couldn’t use a keyboard anymore. Hopefully the man swelling will go down in time. If it doesn’t I guess I will just have to start going to the footy more to hang out with my own kind. Or maybe I will start playing and astound everyone with my new physique. Either way, I gotta go now to shave my man back again. That’s the 3rd time in as many hours.

GO THE ROOS!

Phew, we made it but it was a close call there for a moment.

Pedro Ronaldez, a guide we found up a tree a couple of days ago, was eaten by a Cambodian Tiger Spider yesterday. I was nearly dessert but luckily Roxanne scared it away by threatening to take it to the Russian market for 3 days in a row when we reached Phnom Penh. They are far from human, but even insects can look scared shitless when faced with a fate worse than death.

We never found the ancient treasure of Wat Suluu but we did manage to stumble over some ruins apparently called Angkor Wat which were quite impressive. Luckily there was a McDonalds inside which allowed us to refill out water bags and feed our ponies (Not exactly sure what ponies are doing in the deep jungle actually… Spider ponies?).

Er… Ok I can’t be bothered making shit up. I gotta stop posting when I am knackered.

Yeah so we are back from Cambodia! It was great, easily one of the best if not THE best trip we have been on.

The country was totally amazing from the great geography to the temples, beaches and really friendly people. It was all made even more amazing by the fact that the whole country has been royally fucked over for the last 20-50 years by the French, Khmer Rouge and the Vietnamese yet you wouldn’t really know it from the welcome we received from everyone we met.

All the people seem positive and just want to make a better future for themselves and their children after all of the atrocities that have gone on in the past. I can’t help but think this has something to do with the fact that they are all Buddhists. You must have serious willpower to be able to get on with life when some of Khmer Rouge (a communist organisation who murdered between 1.7 - 3 million of the people of Cambodia during the 70s) are still in the government today and may not ever face trial for what they did!

Click the links below for more info on Cambodia and its terrible history:

Khmer Rouge
Cambodia

The place also has some great temple ruins in the jungle which are amazing to explore. I shot 12 hours of footage on the trip and am currently importing it to the computer. If I have enough space you can expect some sort of awesome movie to be up on the net by Christmas. I’m gonna just add all the clips together then run it in slow-mo so you might want to get a cushion or something… And a couple of strong drinks

Our group was made up entirely of girls of about our age which was unexpected but cool. The next group we saw when we leaving was mostly the same but it had a loud older American lady who talked with a slow drawl that would make me want to punch myself unconscious after about 5 minutes. I’ll take hilarious young people who know how to travel any day!

Our guide Amy was a totally cool chick and made it really feel like we were all just a group of friends on a trip out somewhere. She was a bit mental and liked to impersonate a lesser spotted swamp rat on occasion (I have the footage to show it) which was funny (you probably had to be there). Speaking of funny shit, the closest I came dying on the trip was when Hayley (a hilarious girl from Liverpool) told me what is possibly the funniest thing I have heard in ages while we were driving up a mountain in the back of a ute… Did I mention that I laughed alot on the trip? Well I did. I guess you had to be there.

Also…. I ate spiders and Rox bought everything in the market!! (suprised? :)) I’ll post the pics later, it’s late and I need to go to bed now cos I have some long-distance-flight-induced-cold-bollocks at the moment. That’s cold bollocks not “cold bollocks” by the way.

l8r!