Playing with the kids in Kamume Village, where I lived to learn to farm maize.  Kamume Village, Zambia. Photographed January 21, 2008.

Read, listen, watch and come along on my trip around-the-world on my travelogue at www.noboundaries.org

Read, listen, watch and come along on my trip around-the-world on my travelogue at www.noboundaries.org

Eating pretzels in Mozart’s hometown, overlooking Salzberg, Austria with Pavel and Monika (of The Czech Republic).

Read about the cow’s trip around-the-world at www.noboundaries.org.

• Leave a comment in the box below
• See other photos of the cow from around-the-world and with new friends.
• Read the cow’s story

Cataracts cloud both of this woman’s eyes, leaving her effectively blind. Taveuni, Island Fiji. Photographed November 19, 2009.

I was working as part of a volunteer team doing cataract surgeries to help restore vision to people on the remote outlying islands of Fiji were these services would otherwise be unavailable (and unaffordable).

Read, listen, watch and come along on my trip around-the-world on my travelogue at www.noboundaries.org

Big apologies my loyal reader for my extended absence from the web (and lack of posts), but I’ve had little to no internet access in much of The South Pacific, since I left New Zealand in October. But we’re back on the net, and there’s a lot more adventures and stories to come!

• Leave a comment on this photo below.
• See more of my photo-a-week, random snaps from random moments (in no particular order).
• Check out my photo galleries from Japan, Hong Kong, India, China, Vietnam, San Francisco, Cambodia, Chicago and more on Flickr.

Visiting a dress factory in the outskirts of Bangkok, Thailand. Fay (front and center) is a bit puzzled about me and my camera. Photographed December 8, 2008.

Read, listen, watch and come along on my trip around-the-world on my travelogue at www.noboundaries.org

• Leave a comment on this photo below.
• See more of my photo-a-week, random snaps from random moments (in no particular order).
• Check out my photo galleries from Japan, Hong Kong, India, China, Vietnam, San Francisco, Cambodia, Chicago and more on Flickr.

The Cow’s 3-Years Around-The-World on Vimeo

Also, The Cow has joined the 21st Century and is now on Facebook, and he’d love to have you as a friend.

• Leave a comment  on the post below.
• Friend The Cow on Facebook!
• Read The Cow’s Story
• See and Download the photos from this video (and more) in The Cow’s Flickr Galleries:
  The Cow Around The World and The Cow and Friends
• Read a bit about The Cow’s Photo Gallery Show in Seoul, South Korea.

Moeraki Boulders. Moeraki, New Zealand (East coast of the South Island). Photographed August 26, 2009.

• Leave a comment on this photo below.
• See more of my photo-a-week, random snaps from random moments (in no particular order)
• Check out my photo galleries from Japan, Hong Kong, India, China, Vietnam, San Francisco, Cambodia, Chicago and more on Flickr.

Shot on a cold morning a few weeks ago on a cattle muster across the sandy soil of the Outback south of Alice Springs, Australia.  (Lesson learned: cowboys/stockmen don’t use horses anymore, they’ve been replaced by quad bikes). Photographed July 17, 2009.

• Leave a comment on the photo below.
• See more of my photo-a-dayish, random snaps from random moments (in no particular order)
• Check out my photo galleries from Japan, Hong Kong, India, China, Vietnam, San Francisco, Cambodia, Chicago and more on Flickr.

Here is a small collection of my photos from my first visit to India (you can see them all larger, and with captions, by clicking on the images below or going directly to my Flickr gallery).

• Leave a comment on the post below
• Read how my ‘friends of friends’ introduced me to India in ‘They Were Poets, I Didn’t Know It’
• See Shikha Khanna’s Guest Post of photographs of Delhi’s Street Kids.
• See my other photos from Japan, Beijing, Hong Kong and Vietnam

I met a snake charmer on the ghats that run along the Ganges River in Varinasi, India…he introduced me to his snakes.  (This is an actual photograph—no Photoshop—and yes, the snake is very real.)

PS–Sorry for the lack of blog updates/Tweets lately, I’m presently 23 days into a 30 day TV shoot in Thailand and India, so I’ll catch up on my posts in about a week!

• Leave a comment on this post in the box below.
• Recently, I was: Acting In A Bollywood Movie and Bathing Elephants In Thailand
• See what other things I’ve been up to recently in Around The World In Photos

I spent the afternoon bathing an elephant in a village stream in Northern, Thailand.

• Leave a comment on this post in the box below.
• Last time I was: Acting In A Bollywood Movie.
• See what other things I’ve been up to recently in Around The World In Photos

Name: Shikha Khanna

Hometown: New Delhi, India

Where she traveled: She’s traveled across India with camera in hand.

Where our paths last crossed: New Delhi, India

In past ‘Guest Traveler’ posts we’ve featured the writings of many (one of my favorite from Chen Luan in Shanghai), the videos of Davey Dance and the music of road warrior David Strackany (aka Paleo), now I’d like to share with you some guest travel photography from India.

Shikha and I met through a friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend and our mutual interests in photography and creativity helped forge a quick friendship.

Below is a series of some of her amazing photos of street kids in India.

The term ’street kid’ often draws up images of ragged clothes, dirty faces and outstretched palms, and when traveling (or living) in India, most people develop an indifference as a way to cope with the sheer numbers of such children on the street—after a while, the kids become invisible to most people.

Shikha’s photographs make these kids visible again, and remind me (and hopefully all of us) that behind the sooty hands and gnarly hair is infact a genuine child, smiling, happy and enraptured at times by the simplest of things.

I hope you find her photographs as inspiring and uplifting as I do.

All photography above our copyright Shikha Khanna and should not be reprinted,
reposted or used without the express written consent of the author. www.shikhakhanna.com

• Leave a comment on this post in the box below.
• Shikha can be reach through her website at www.shikhakhanna.com where you can also find more of her photographs.
• Suggest some to be featured as a future NoBoundaries.org “Guest Traveler” by contacting us.
• Read entries from some of the other “Guest Travelers” featured on NoBoundaries.org:
  • 陈峦 – Chen Luan, a friend from Shanghai on her trip to Lugu Lake in Yunan, China.
  • Nicole Bruskewitz saving turtles and backpacking the back roads of Central
    and South America for a year.
  • Richard Bitbaba, Iranian-born adventure traveler, takes on Mt Everest.
  • Davey Dance, a travel video series I guarantee will help you lose an hour of your day.

[A new, ongoing  series about what I'm doing....right now.]

Playing a 19th Century British Soldier (huh?) in the soon-to-be-released Bollywood film Veer, staring Bollywood heart-throb/badboy Salman Khan. It an epic, period film about the uprising of a band of rebels against the ruling Maharaja who is aligned with the British crown (think Braveheart, but with more song-and-dance numbers).

[At one point, the director was placing me in my position, and said, "Ah, our Mongolian British Commander, excellent."]

Keep your eyes on your local theater come October.

• Leave a comment on this post in the box below.
• See what other things I’ve been up to recently in Around The World In Photos

(all images are copyright 2008 Andy Stoll, and should not be used without prior permission.)

• Leave a comment on this post below, tell us your favorite photo
• See my normal sized photos from elsewhere in Tibet
• Read a bit about my Seven Days In Tibet or read some of my short stories from Tibet.
• See some more of my photos from Japan, Beijing, Hong Kong and Vietnam

 See my other photos from Tibet in my Flickr Gallery by clicking here or on the collage below:

What you can do now:

• Leave a comment on this post below.
• Read more about the setup for my 7 Days in Tibet
• See some of my other photo galleries

When we stopped the car on the top of a mountain pass to take some photos, these teenagers—from a nearby group of nomadic people who were tending their sheep–came over to ask for money (and sweets). We ended up convincing them to take a photo with The Cow, and it has been the only time on my trip thus far I actually thought someone was going to steal the cow; right after I snapped this photo I thought for a moment the kids on the end was going to make a run for it. Instead we gave them some candy, which they proceeded to essentially beat the sh*t out of each other to get their share. A bit scary honestly. On a mountain pass in Southern Tibet.

What you can do now:

• Leave a comment about this post below.
• See a collection of other photos of The Cow from Around The World
• Read The Cow’s Story

• Read more about my Seven Days In Tibet

Walking through the remote Tibetan village that housed the Shangrila Cheese Factory, we were met by a number of curious villagers, who came out to see who we were. The father and son in this photo came walking by and we asked if we could take a photo—the father is leaning a bit funny because I think he wanted us to see his basket and he was also reminding his son to stand up straight.

Imagine what you’d do if someone, speaking a language you didn’t understand, came walking through your neighborhood and asked to take a picture of you?

• Leave a comment on this post below.
• See another installment of “In This Picture” of another father and son in Vietnam.
• Read more about Langdu Village and their Cheese Factory in There’s No Sesame Chicken In China.
• See more photos from the factory and village in my Langdu Village Flickr Gallery.

Train travel in Vietnam is safe, inexpensive, and a fantastic way to meet locals, while seeing a lot of the country. The food is delicious and there’s plenty of English across the country, so you’ll have no problem finding a place to eat or sleep.

Here are a few photos from the trip.

Click on the collage below (or right here) to see the entire photo gallery.

• Leave a comment about this post in the box below.
• Learn all you need to take the train in Vietnam, from one of the absolute best travel sites out there: Seat 61.com.
• Read about My Tour of Duty in Vietnam
• Meet some friends from the train In This Picture: in Da nang, Vietnam
• See photos from my train trip: Across Japan by Bullet Train (Shinkansen)
• See photos of my trip across Cambodia by bus
• See all my photo galleries from my trip around-the-world

Can’t see an image, click here.

• Leave a comment below
• Read the story that goes along with this photo gallery 1 Bus, 2 Motorbike, 8 Cambodian Drug Dealers, and A Run For The Border
• See other photos from Cambodia in the The Temples of Angkor

A taxi picked us up at our guest house in Siem Reap at 6am and dropped us at the crowded city bus station, overrun with hawkers selling everything from bananas to hair picks—all swimming in a muddy, trash strewn parking lot of honking buses and taxis haphazardly laid out in no recognizable fashion. We insisted on trying to get the $8 tickets on a “local” bus, avoiding the pricier (but cleaner) $12 “tourist bus” to make the journey to the Cambodian capital city. Clutching our bags tightly we pressed ourselves through the bus yard crowd and in semi-English/Cambodian were directed to a dust-covered jalopy of a bus with a cracked windshield. We stashed our bags in the cargo hold underneath, before climbing aboard.

Once on the bus, as our eyes adjusted to the dim musty interior, we were met by a wall of curious eyes, as we were, at this point, the only three non-Cambodians on the bus. A group of about 8 men, gathered in back, quickly shuffled seats in what seemed like an obvious move to avoid having to sit next to one of the foreigner. We checked our seat numbers, and Weijie made a move for his seat, as a larger man shifted over towards him, filling two chairs—including the one Weijie was clearly headed for—this elicited a hardy laugh out of the rest of the men. We awkwardly shifted around in a game of musical-bus-seats and when the music stopped Weijie and Janny were sharing two seats in back and I was sitting by myself a few rows up, next to a skinny young man with a gaunt face and tussled black hair. As I sat, his eyed darted out the window and I shoved my daypack under my chair. The ride was to take 6 hours.

Eventually the bus filled, and with the exception of a German couple in the first row, we were out numbered by Cambodians 55 to 3. I leafed through a few pages in my book, before I was interrupted by the skinny young man, who turned to me and in nervous English said, “Hello, I am Sophea.”

“Hello,” I said, “My name is Andy.”

“I try to sit next to foreigners on the bus,” he continued, “Most of my friends don’t like to, but I want to practice my English.”

I smiled.

Over the next few hours, Sophea and I chatted for much of the time and I learned that he was 23, had a degree from a Cambodian university in computers and had spent the last year working at an IT company in Phom Phen. Recently though, he had to quit his job because the salary (about $150/month) was not enough to live on his own–his family lived in a village far away in the northeast part of the country. He had spent a number of months applying for better paying IT jobs, but having found none, he took a job as a sales man for a US-based company that sold multi-vitamins and nutrition related drugs in Cambodia–in this job he said, he could make 3 to 4 times what he was making in an IT job.

A view out the bus window….

He was returning from a meeting with the company’s founder, who flew in from the US a few days earlier, the other guys on the bus—the group we had played musical chair with earlier—were his co-workers.

On the bus ride that afternoon, Sophea gave me his sales pitch, flipping through pages of a plastic binder and saying he didn’t need me to buy anything but wanted only to practice his English. The company, it seemed, sold nutritional supplements intended to fix health aliments that don’t really exist where I come from in American, yet are prevalent in an under-developed and often malnourished country like Cambodia (i.e. leprosy, gout, etc). So for anywhere between $5 and $50 I could buy bottles of Vitamin C, supplements and special nutritional drugs. The company, Sportron, it appears to me, operates in a sort of Amway/pyramid scheme style, but my lack of internet hasn’t allowed me much time to look into it since (feel free to let me know what you think, www.sportron.com). It is run from its corporate offices in Texas by its American founders. I was a bit skeptical of the company, but Sophea seemed excited about the money he could make; he said, if he were able to recruit other sales people to the company a percentage of their sales would be his. He had, at the time of this story, been with the company for 1 month.

Four hours into the bus ride, we came to a stop at a roadside restaurant for lunch, and we exited the bus in search of bathrooms. Weijie, Janny and I walked by steaming pans of food and what appeared to be a cafeteria, but our inability to speak Cambodian and our unfamiliarity with the food led us to consider waiting to eat until later. As I headed back to the bus, I heard someone call my name and looked up to see Sophea and his eight coworkers waving me over to join them. They pulled up a chair for me, and two for my friends, and as I sat, plates of food were set before us. In typical American style, I declined immediately, but soon was enticed to eat. Janny and Weijie eventually joined, and we dined on the Cambodian equivalent of a burger and fries (it was rice and fish among other things). The group of men introduced themselves in broken English and we introduced ourselves back in the same broken English. Soon, the bus honked its horn to signal its imminent departure and we headed back to our seats. As we settled in, I attempted to pass a few dollars to one of the men, a man we came to know as “Tiger, who without hesitation, refused to accept it. Even after I insisted he take it, he waved me off. (At this point, its important to remember that its very possible that I make more in one day at work in America, then he makes in an entire month in Cambodia).

Family transportation, Cambodian style.

Sophea and I continued to chat as the bus started off again, I asked him about life in Cambodia and he asked me about America. A few hours later, as the bus arrived at the station in Phnom Penh, Sophea said, “I will go get my bike.” Unsure exactly what he meant, and still a little hesitant of strangers (it was early on in my trip), I wasn’t sure of what to make of it, but we agreed to meet in an hour at our guest house.

Almost exactly an hour later, Sophea showed up at our door with a motorcycle helmet in hand and a friend with another bike in tow. For the next three hours, Sophea and his friend drove us around town on the back of their motorbikes, taking us to see the tallest building in town (a shopping mall), a temple, and a few other sights.

As rain descended on the city, we retreated to a restaurant for a fried squid snack and I suggested we buy a small gift for the Sportron guys (the ones who had bought us lunch) and stop by their office to drop it off (despite being it a Sunday, most of them were at work). We arrived at the offices and after an hour or so of hanging out, we decided it might be best to just take them out to dinner, since they had been so kind as to treat us for lunch.

An hour later, we three travelers and eight Sportron drug and supplement salesman (plus a few friends and one wife), gathered for what could only be described as an absolutely fantastic Cambodian hot pot dinner at a restaurant I recommend highly (Dararaksmey Restaurant, #51 St. 63 Corner St. 208, Sangkat Boeng Raing, Khan Daun Penh in Phnom Penh; 012 877 087).

Cambodian Hot Pot @ Dararaksmey Restaurant

Despite the fact that not everyone spoke English, and we clearly spoke no Cambodian, we had a fantastic night dining with our friends from the bus. As the beers continued to be opened and the food kept coming, I quietly grew concerned that this dinner might cost us more than we bargained for—we were, after all, budget travelers despite our inherent affluence. At the end of the night the bills was totaled and for fourteen people to have essentially all-we-could eat and drink at what I bet is one of Phnom Penh’s finest hot pot restaurants, the entire night set us back $43 USD.

Happy and full, we thanks are new friends who gave us a ride back to our guesthouse.Early the next morning we boarded another bus bound for Ho Chi Min City, Vietnam ($3). On this second bus ride we didn’t find any new friends, but we did almost lose the bus.

Shops opening in the early morning hours.

At a ferry crossing the bus stopped for what we thought was a bathroom break, but before we returned, the bus pulled forward getting lost in a jumble of probably twenty identical buses that was slowing moving forward onto the ferry deck (mental note: next time you are in a line of buses, pay closer attention to what your bus looks like!).

As the traffic lurched forward, a crowd of people on foot were allowed to overtake the dock and the ferry horn blew which signaling the ferry’s immediate departure. Amongst the crowd of dozens and dozens of Cambodian women with baskets on their heads, livestock, and hawkers selling fruit, candy and sunglasses, we frantically chased what we hoped was our bus (with our bags in its cargo compartment). We pounded on the bus’s aluminum siding as it rolled forward, hoping the door would open as the gang plank of the ferry was pulled up nearly right underneath our feet and the ferry set off across the Mekong River towards Vietnam.

We were one of the last few people let onto the ferry. Fortunately in our mad dash for the boat, we managed to single out the right bus, but unfortunately in the rush, we didn’t get any great pictures of the chase.

We crashed into our bus seats with our nerves shot and sweat pouring down our brows from the tropical heat, and an hour later as the sun hit its apex overhead we made it to the border crossing, putting a close to our Cambodian adventures and opening the door for this American tourist to literally walk into Vietnam—one of the last Communist countries on the planet.

Vietnam Border Post

[You can view more photos from our trip across Cambodia in the photo gallery that will be highlighted tomorrow---Don't have a clue where to find that? Then click here.]

• Leave a comment in the box below
• Read another story of a random friend I made in Window Shopping in Cambodia
• Read a random story from China and how I Bought A Camera From a Guy Named Fish