[GUEST AUTHOR] --> Nick

Well, Karen has graciously allowed me to be the first ever guest poster on the round the world epic website. It's an Honor.

Karen popped into London on Wednesday and we promptly took the first plane we could catch to Inverness, in the Scottish Highlands.

In 5 days we packed a lot in. Biked to Loch Ness for a fine pub lunch on Friday, spoke with the monster, who declined to be photographed, then spent 2 nights in a remote bothy on the edge of the world, with a Scotsman on the edge of madness. (A bothy is a simple stone cottage that exists for anyone who happens to wander past to take refuge in, and as for the Scotsman, I'll let Karen wrap that story up). Then we carried on to Dundonnel on the shores of Little Loch Broom, and made our way to the summit of An Teallach, saw a few amazing waterfalls and got a lift from a nice, less mad, Scotsman back to Inverness this morning!

It was my first time in Scotland and I was incredibly impressed. It's stunningly beautiful, didn't rain much (emphasis on much), and the people were almost universally friendly, polite and generous to a point I've certainly never seen in the southern half of this enchanted isle. If you've never been to Scotland, get up and go now! It's awesome.

Photo: The intrepid mountaineers conquer the summit of An Teallach, one of Scotland's most formidable and beautiful peaks.

is a dusty and smoggy capital city. Streets are lined with old brick buildings and there is at least a temple or buddhist stupa or some kind of statue of a Hindu god every other corner. Driving down any road you will run into some random cows strolling/wating/lying down in the middle of the road. Cars swerve to avoid them and the millions of potholes. Needless to say, riding in any kind of vehicle is butt bruising. There are no laws, hardly any traffic lights. The horn is heavily used, you get honked at even if you are not really in the way.

Terrorism, maoist rebels and SARS have reduced the amount of visitors here. I am staying in the tourist area, Thamel, where the streets are lined with shops. From the minute i step out of my hotel, all i hear is 'Madame, how are you?......You like? i give you good price...'. I also constantly get looks and questions about where i am from. If i tell them i am from the US, they will say, 'but you look Tibeten!' If i say I am from Hong Kong, they say, 'Óh, SARS!'

People are really nice here. Although I did give up on talking to anyone while looking at temples, especially after meeting this Nepali guy who offered to show me some temples (supposedly he didn't want money) starting telling me about travelers that have become his friends and what i gathered as his sugar-mama. He then subtly asked if i needed ''company'', and some 'jumping, pumping and humping'. I couldn't believe what he was proposing and laughed! I said no thank you and he said he wanted money for the hour that he showed me around, i reluctantly paid him and walked away. I seems quite funny now but I was quite annoyed and felt a bit uncomfortable. Now I know what they think of us seeming lonely solo female travelers.

How will a trip to Nepal be complete without getting a close look at the mountains? Since i couldn't see them too well on my hike, I went and took a mountain flight, on a small plane designed for high-altitude flying, went up to 25,000ft, got as close to the Himalyans as possible and caught a glimpse of Everest, standing at over 28,000ft. It was a wonderful sight, the mountains were simply...majestic! Can't wait to come back for a trek up there (well, it will be to the bottom of these mountains)!

Well, tomorrow I will head to London, for a final week or two on my round the world ticket.

I thought I would post an email from Karen that described her recent trek - Its hard to post with limited time in internet cafe's. I didn't seek the authors permission though, hopefully I'm not sued:

it's ... been 3 days...! i went with
these two guides by bus to this town 1 hour away from
Kathmandu and hiked 4 hours uphill the first day! they
said that i am a good and fast walker because it often
takes people 5 hours for that walk :)

we hiked through little villages, if you can call it
that, just some people living up on the hills. by the
way, our mountains are only considered little hills
here. The kathmandu valley is actually quite hilly,
both nights we stayed in towns at about 7000ft. the
first night in a little village, i really liked it.
the teahouse/hotel we stayed in was really small,
people were nice and there were some other travelers
there, the guides were showing them nepali dancing and
i was taught the card game Shithead. It's quite cloudy
but luckily it rained a little so we could actually
see the mountain range that first afternoon. it was
beautiful. i didn't even see the highest peak out
there. i think the highest one i saw was only about
6000m, yes, only. they have about 15 peaks above
6000m!

yesterday we had a long day and hiked about 6 hours to
this bigger town again with views of the mountains and
the valley but it's too cloudy to see the big
mountains. This morning we woke up at 5am to hike up
to this viewpoint in hope of seeing the high peaks.
the sunrise was nice over the valley and i managed to
catch a small glimpse (not sure if it will turn out on
the photos) of Langtang which is about 8000m!! it was
amazing how high it was.

today we didn't really hike, just took a bus down to
the a cool town called Bhaktapur where there are tons
of old temples and buildings with lots of nice wood
carving, mostly done between 14th and 17th century. it
was nice excpet that i wasn't feeling very well. i am
coming down with a cold :( but i think i will be
alright.

So the hike was nice. the guides were good company. we
will definitely have to come back and do a longer real
trek up in the mountains. I would love to do the
everest base camp trek. The guide said that i would be
in good shape to do it, it will just be the altitude
which i think i will be alright too. it will be at
least a 2 weeks trek. I wished i had gone up to the
annapurnas for even just a few days to be closer to
the mountains but i am also glad i did this valley
walk because it's not very popular but i think it was
just as nice as any hikes we do. the valley views were
great and i did get to see some valley farm life.

Well, shockingly I'm headed to Reno in about 1hr, while Karen is treking in Nepal. The contract came together, after a humilating whiz quiz as Justin K. calls it. But enough of existential angst - the point of this post is that I've posted some new thumbnail postings... look on the right hand side under Pictures.

Other than visiting eery museums, I also went to visit the great temples of Angkor. There are about 60 temples spread out over a 71km2 area (i think there are more that haven't been uncovered yet) and you need to spend a week to see all of them. I spent 2.5 days and saw the main ones. It was quite amazing. Most of them are built of sandstone and that were merely stacked on top of another, no cement or anything to hold them together. And even more amazing were the carvings. Some of the temples are very preserved but some have been partially destroyed by the Khmer Rouge and wars.

I hired a moto driver, Rith, for the three days and he is one of the nicest and most genuine person I have met in the tourism industry here. If anyone is thinking of taking a trip there, I have his info!

My week in Cambodia went by quickly but i felt like I got a real feel for the place and learned a lot about the people and the history in that short period of time. Just the Killing Field and Tuong Sleng Genocide Museum in Phnom Penh alone would have made the trip worthwhile.

Tuong Sleng was a former school converted into a prison, called S21, by the Khmer Rouge where they interrogated, tortured and electricuted thousands of Cambodians during their regime from 1975 - 1978. The killing field 15km away was where they took the prisoners to kill and bury in mass graves. The prison is now a museum, unlike other museums, this one hasn't be renovated, there aren't a lot of writing and descriptions of anything, just pictures, paintings, torture equipment that were left behind. It was an eery place especially since there weren't a lot of visitors. I can't begin to describe the pictures and things i saw but I now truely understand the meaning of the saying 'a picture says a thousand words'.

I can't help but wonder how people are able to lead normal lives after such a traumatic event. Almost everyone you talk to would have lost a family member and/or suffered through the miliant rule. I encourage you to read more about the history of these events on the Landmine Museum website. I went to the this museum. It's really this guy's home. He has spent most of life as a soldier, starting at the age of 5 when the Khmer Rouge trained him to fire guns and place landmines after they killed his parents. He now devotes his life to demining his country. He does this alone and has demined over 10,000 (or probably more, i can't remember) landmines. And he took in a few children who were maimed by landmines in the country side.

It was truely an eye-opener and I kept thinking to myself how lucky we are.

I am now in Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia. Charlie and I spent a few days in Bangkok and a couple days on the beach on Koh Samed, half way between bangkok and Cambodia border. Charlie has headed back to the US to start a contract in Carson City and I decided to stay and do a little bit more traveling in SE Asia.

It took a full day of traveling to get me here from the not so pleasant Thai border town, Trat. Getting a visa at the border was easy and a few other travelers and i were whisked off to the boat dock for a 4 hour boat ride to a seaport called Silhanoukville. I wasn't so fond of Silhanoukville and decided to hop on a 3-4 hour bus to Phnom Penh. The bus ride was nice. We passed by lush greenery, farms and lots of wooden shacks built on silts. The bus wa air-conditioned and they played Karaoke videos the entire time. The music and video reminded me of old school whiny chinese soap operas. I feel like I am back in the early 80's.

I haven't seen much of Phnom Penh yet but the streets are filled with motorcycles and bikes. apparently there is a lot of car hijacking so not a lot of people, not even taxi drivers dare drive a car around town.

This morning I went to the 'Killing Field'. It was perhaps the sadest place i have been. From 1975 - 1978, The Khmer Rouge regime killed about 2 million people, about a third of the population. The Killing Field (named after the movie, actual name Chuong Ek) was a execution ground where more than 10,000 people - intellectuals, foreigners, women, children, etc. - were killed and buried in mass graves. They have unearthed 86 out of about 120 graves so you see big holes on the ground on the site. You also see bones semi-protruding out of the ground and random pieces of clothing lying about. In the late 80's they built a monument which consisted of 17 levels of skulls and bones, to commerate the loss. I won't go into detail on how these innocent men, women and children were tortured and killed.

Well, we stuck to our old plan to leave for Bangkok on May 1 anyway, even though we won't be meeting my family. Due to other changes in our plans, we decided to leave Oz and head for Thailand, and probably onto Laos and Cambodia. So it's goodbye for now to beautiful Sydney and other parts of Australia that we didn't get to see on this trip. I did get to catch up with old friends and I am sure we will be back again soon to do some more exploration, hopefully it will be over a few months in an awesome van!