01/08/14 - 01/12/14 The night bus to Nha Trang, my next destination after Saigon, was unlike any bus trip I have been on before. Most night buses, were just that, a bus that happened to go overnight. Vietnamese night buses, however, are built to go overnight, in that the seats are like little beds. And when I say little, I mean they are tiny. And they are not quite beds either, more like reclined seats. There is very little room to move around. And as ther...

01/04/14 - 01/08/14 After Maxine left, I had one more day in Phnom Penh before I headed to Vietnam. I didn't do much that day, just ran a few errands, but I did manage to run into a bunch of riot police. Apparently, there was some kind of protest in the middle of the city that had something to do with the garment industry. Maxine and I had witnessed some sort of event, a week or so before, when we were in Phnom Penh the first time, but we didn't know...

01/01/14 - 01/05/14 The week on the beach had ended and it was now a new year. Maxine and I were now heading to Phnom Penh, the capital city of Cambodia. We had a long bus ride ahead of us, but we still had the morning to relax, enjoy the beach and to say goodbye to Sylvain. This, obviously, meant a lot more to Maxine than it did to me, however, after spending some time with him, I thought Sylvain was a really nice and interesting guy, so it was sa...

12/25/13 - 01/01/14 Christmas in Cambodia was unlike any Christmas I have ever had before. Mostly, because it just never felt like Christmas at all, despite all the weird signs with Santa, snow and reindeers all over the place. Cambodia is a Buddhist country, yet there were Christmas signs everywhere. I know they were up, so as to make the tourist feel more at home, but to me, it just felt weird. So, because of the strangeness of it all and the fac...

12/17/13 - 12/24/13 When I first met Maxine, I was sick in bed with food poisoning. I felt awful and the only thing I had tried to eat that day was a half a bowl of rice. She moved into my dorm room that night and had the bunk above me. She didn't seem to think it was odd that I was already in bed at 9pm and so she introduced herself and we chatted for a bit, nothing out of the ordinary. There was no way I would have guessed that she would become an inte...