Finishing Up, Roadtrip Days 5-6-7

February 26, 2026

BLEEP BLEEEP BLEEEP!! 5:30 am. Time to roll out of bed and hit the road. Jebel Shams sunrise at 6:45am and it takes about an hour to drive up there, go go go. Completely pitch black outside when I left. I was driving a little fast for being on windy mountain roads in the dark. But I lived. And made it up there with plenty of time to spare actually, as you have to wait for the sun to climb over the mountains a bit! I forgot about that part. I’m probably putting too much effort into these completely cloudless sunrises and sunsets… but with only a two week trip, I still have plenty of energy for it. No travel fatigue just quite yet. Although waking up for the sunrise almost every single day is maybe a bit much. Anyway the photography was pretty mediocre, although I had a goat pose for me, what a gentleman.

that little white line on the bottom right is the trail, looks more dangerous from up here

Goat delay. This was the shot, but I had the wrong lens on

Was that worth the 5:30 alarm? Hmm. Up next would be Oman’s most famous hike, the balcony walk, an 8km/5mile out and back hike that traverses the along the edge of the canyon, giving you some nice exposure. And as far as I could tell, I was the first person on it this morning. Which was great obviously, the more places I get all to myself, the better. And I’d beat the heat. The hike is pretty safe, you never really get close to the edge and views are great, plus there’s random goats hopping along the rocks. It’s a pretty snappy trek, and hour out, and hour back, plus however long for breaks. There were A LOT more people coming down on the trail as I was headed back up and out!

You never really feel all that close to edge, but still pretty dramatic views

Back to the nice coffeeshop to get my usual cappuccino and that would conclude my morning at Jebel Shams. A pretty good one. Back down the mountain and back to my guesthouse in Al Hamra. I’d have some daylight time to actually check out it’s abandoned village area, as my hotel was basically in the middle of it. Getting a bit same samey at this point though. The only thing of interest in the rubble was some of the metal doors still in place. A couple businesses were operating in it, so it wasn’t completely devoid of people. It would be cool if they could restore more of the very old buildings and actually use them, rather than have it be another ghost town. And there was a small museum, but it’s tour only, and I didn’t feel like doing that. I found a leafy outdoor café to eat some lunch and went back to the room to relax for a bit.

I was surprised how how green it was, lots of date palms around

I didn’t really have any plans until late afternoon when I’d visit Misfat Al Abriyeen, a traditional mountain village that’s a few hundred years old, though renovated quite a bit for tourists, and pedestrian only. It wasn’t far outside of Al Hamra. You maybe have to walk 500 meters from where you park to get to the entrance of the village. The village itself is actually tiny, you walk through the whole thing in 20 minutes tops, but the nice thing is the surrounding area is all palm trees and there are all these irrigation canals, the falaj system, that have been used for thousands of years to irrigate crops in the middle eastern desert climates. I then caught the sunset from one of the rooftop cafes, although the views weren’t particularly great or anything. Then it was back to the same shisha place and back to that same Yemeni restaurant because I liked it so much. Déjà vu.

Entrance to the coffeshop, beaming you up

The next morning I bought the hotel breakfast and the guy brought a big tray of food to my room, and I was like ‘I’ll eat on the rooftop,’and he told me it was fine to eat in the room. Uhh ok. So I brought my tray of food up to rooftop by myself, why wouldn’t you eat on the rooftop?! And there I met an Italian couple, who said the exact same thing! Although they were not in high spirits as they damaged their 2WD car on the Jebel Shams mountain road, yikes. So their trip was temporarily on hold as they had to wait and see what the mechanic would have to say about it. Ooof, that sucks. But that’s why you suck it up and get a 4x4 for this type of roadtrip!

morning view of the old town at the rooftop ‘restaurant’

Coincidentally, today (also my last full day) would be my most adventurous one with the car, and I was slightly nervous. I was heading into the snake canyon, which is strictly 4x4 only, you’re just not gonna make it with a 2wd car. Once you start going down into the canyon it’s all dirt/rock/gravel roads, and they’re steep and bumpy! And in some parts very dusty and sandy with bad traction. But now I was getting the hang of these roads, it was pretty fun, a nice challenge how to best navigate each section without banging around the car too much. And everything is easier than sand dunes! The only slightly tricky parts were narrow sections if someone was coming the other way. The photos don’t convey the steepness very well!

As always, down at the bottom of the canyon were wadi hikes, two of them. One you’d need a guide and ropes to get you in and out of certain spots, the other was doable on foot. I obviously opted for the one without ropes, although in hindsight I do kind of wish I signed up with one of the tour companies for the adventure tour, it sounded quite fun and would have been a good way to meet more people. Outside of my buddy Wail, all I’d met were couples on this roadtrip. In hindsight I probably could have posted on the Oman FB group or something to see if anyone wanted to tag along, as I’m sure there’s some backpackers out there who don’t want to (or can’t) pay the car rental costs for just one person. Oh well.

My wadi hike was very nice as usual. Once again, nobody around, this one involved some rock scrambling, and eventually you get to a point where the hike ends and you have to swim. So I stashed my bag somewhere and started swimming through the canyon a bit. Although I didn’t make it too far because the on-land parts were just killing my bare feet on the rocks. I needed some water shoes! But swimming through these canyons is just so much fun.

This is where the trail ends and you have to swim

So that was basically the whole afternoon, driving dirt 4x4 roads through the mountains and doing my daily wadi hike + swim. Fantastic. It was a little tougher going up and out than coming down, you just have to be aggressive with accelerator. Pedal to the metal! But totally fine. I of course stopped at the coffeeshop with view when you get out of the canyon, and then it was onto Nizwa, the biggest city in the interior region, which has the most popular fort in the country, the aptly named Nizwa Fort; as well as an old town (of course) and a lively market/souk. And as usual the drive getting there was excellent!

I checked into a private room at a hostel/guesthouse and was off to see the fort for sunset. Although I did have a bit off time to check out the old town area that’s around Nizwa. Nizwa was the capital of Oman in the 6th and 7th centuries, right around the time of Islam being adopted, so it has some famous mosques, I’d get to the big one tomorrow. Prophet Mohamed sent Nizwa a handwritten letter in 630 AD asking them to convert to Islam, which they accepted, apparently.

The area isn’t very big, but people still drive these silly cars around

Onto the Nizwa Fort. It’s very impressive, the structure had been around a while, but was really turned into the fort it is today in the 1600’s, as Nizwa was the big trading hub back in the day, connecting Muscat and the southwestern region of Dhofar. It’s actually a fort connected to a castle, and the fort features a 40 meter tower that had all sorts of great defense systems, trap doors, canons, musket holders, as well as plenty of oil shoots aka murder holes to pour boiling hot date juice/oil on any possible invaders. Fun stuff. It’s interesting how useful those dates are!

And the Fort has even been put to use in recent times as well, when the interior forces of the Imamate were fighting the Muscat Sultanate + the British in the 50’s. The Sultanate would end up winning this one.

This fort is more expensive, but they have dance routines, singing, a food court, an art gallery etc.

The one way up into the tower is very narrow and winding for a reason, so they could pour boiling oil on you if needed

Just look at that shoe and outfit matching

Then it was book reading + shisha time, I was onto my middle eastern geo-politics book, which I was finding fascinating just because as I mentioned before, I’m pretty under-informed about the whole region in general. Proxy wars everywhere. But not by Good Guy Oman! Oman likes to stay out of everything.

Then back to the fort area to take a few night photos and see the souk. The main building was a more modern one with lots of glass display cases and bright fluorescent lighting. They sell lots of halwa (sweets) here, and the cool thing is that vendors let you sample their sweets for free! Nice, I hadn’t had Omani Halwa yet, which is a dense brown jelly cake-like thing, it’s sticky and gooey, you eat it with a spoon. There’s a bunch of different kinds. I tried them all, and I must admit the consistency is just not my thing. I don’t really care for gelatinous goop desserts all that much. Probably why I don’t like Chinese desserts much. I did like the tahini halwa though, which is made from sesame seed paste and topped with ground pistachios, with more of a cookie dough consistency. So that’s what bought. It’s heavy!

Above is the Omani Halwa. If it was more of a chocolate fudge (as it initially appears to be) than a gelatinous consistency I would like it better! To the right is the Tahini Halwa with pistachio topping, mmm.

Then it was off to dinner on my last night, might as well have Oman’s national dish, Shuwa. Slow roasted, marinated, fall off the bone lamb or goat, served on spiced rice. Can’t go wrong with that! Delicious. This region does lamb so well.

I need to work on the food photography! This tastes better than it looks

The next day my flight to Phnom Penh (via Abu Dhabi) was at 6pm, so I had most of the day to get to the airport. It was less than two hours to Muscat on nice roads. So I stopped at the big mosque outside of Nizwa (wore pants this time) and there was basically nobody there. And then I got in another fun little wadi hike, but this one said no swimming. Booo

For this wadi hike you simply walk along the concrete irrigation channel (Aflaj). Easy!

1.5 hours on the highway later I was back in Muscat, I took the Tucson to the car wash, as apparently they’ll ding you $75 cleaning fee if you bring it back too dirty, which my car certainly was. I’d actually gone over my allotted 1200 kilometers, but they didn’t seem to care when I returned the car, so that was nice. I had plenty of time to spare, so it was off to the airport lounge to hang out and then onwards to my usual stomping grounds, Cambodia.

So that was my 7d/6n roadtrip around Oman. Highly highly recommended! Gorgeous country, super safe, super fun driving, very diverse, if you want an introduction to an Arabic country, Oman is it. One week felt just about perfect for seeing all the stuff I wanted to see on the roadtrip, although I could have always used one more day to spend somewhere on the coast to chill out at the end, as it was a pretty action packed trip, but you can always use one more day. Or maybe do the snorkeling trip on the last day instead of the first day. But anyway I was happy with my trip and itinerary, basically everything went according to plan, except maybe getting stuck in the sand for 5 minutes. Overall Oman gets 5 stars! Great country.

Probably the best sunset of the trip at the airport

Road Trip Days 3-4

February 22, 2026

I was happy to be off the sand and back on a real road. I stopped in the gas station to refill my tires, grab a cappuccino, and then back on the highway for some smooth sailing. I had googled some of the most popular Arabic artists and added a few albums to my phone. It was mostly pop music, because if I can’t understand the lyrics, I at least want it to be catchy. I must say, cruising through the desert in a new country, on perfect roads, mountains in the background, listening to some banging Arabic tunes is quite enjoyable! Too enjoyable, because I did end up getting a speeding ticket somewhere along the way! $52 + Enterprise payment fees. Pretty reasonable though.

First stop of the day would be an abandoned village, Harat al Yemen, supposedly one of the oldest settlements in Oman. There are lots of abandoned villages in Oman, but this one is particularly old, which is why it’s preserved, well not exactly preserved, but not demolished either. Supposedly it predates Islam, so before the 600’s AD. FWIW the Islamic Calendar starts in the year 622AD, that’s their year zero. As for abandoned villages there are also many others in various states around the country. This is because modernization happened so fast in Oman, and the government encouraged people to move closer to cities so they could provide everyone with electricity and water and healthcare, things you don’t get so easily out in the desert.

iphone says the sky is going to be really really blue

Yep, that’s what an abandoned house looks like

I was the only person in the abandoned village, which is a pretty eerie feeling! Some of the buildings had sketchy little stairwells so you could climb up and get a decent view of the whole place. Kinda neat. Next up was driving up towards the largest mountain range in Oman, the Jebel Akhdar mountains (Jebel means mountain), the town of Saiq specifically. To get to this area of Oman you need to go up a very steep mountain road, and there’s a checkpoint you have to go through that only allows 4x4’s or AWD. The road is pristine though, and I’m sure normal cars could make it up. So for this town, I was expecting something like a quaint, rustic mountain village, but it was more like a rich person enclave with big SUVs whipping around you.

This photos sums up the place pretty well, very nice modern homes, but still lots of open space and dirt/gravel and goats freely roaming around.

Lots of very nice homes, higher end coffeeshops and restaurants. It kinda felt like the mountain version of Naples where richer Omanis have second homes, except they have them to escape the heat, not to flee to it. Omani summer does not sound pleasant whatsoever. Since it was technically ‘winter’ it wasn’t too crowded. But I’m pretty sure the AWD/4x4 rule is to keep the riffraff out. If you don’t have an SUV or a truck, you ain’t coming.

After checking into my guesthouse – I was wondering why it was so expensive, now I know, I had time to check out one more abandoned village. About 15 minutes out of town was another one, this village was in a more scenic location, built into the mountainside. So it was mildly interesting to pop in all the dilapidated structures, but once again, not really not much to do. I hit my daily quota for abandoned villages. There was a hiking trail I followed for half and hour, but it didn’t appear to lead to anywhere exciting as far as I could tell, and I wanted to get back in town to find a good place to photograph the sunset on the cliffs.

Okay I think you get the idea of what these places look like

And that’s exactly what I did. There are a few very nice resort hotels also perched on the cliffs, but also plenty of open space and rocky areas to scamper around on with great views. Locals like to bring to their portable chairs and tables and teapots and watch the sunset while sipping their tea. And blankets. As soon as the sun sets it gets cold very quickly up this high at this time of year. I took photos from a few different angles, but with these desert climates and no clouds in the sky it’s hard to take any overly dramatic photos. I also got invited for tea, but in Arabic countries I’m never sure if they’re just being polite, as it’s one of those polite gestures people sometimes say but don’t mean, or if they actually want me to join them. I declined, as I had more photos to take, but I appreciated the offer!

I don’t know what these plants are, but I like them

I kinda like this one. I was laying on my stomach and I still I couldn’t get low enough!

Someone’s tea setup. This one isn’t exactly very portable haha. How red it is scares me a little! And you can see one of the big fancy resorts in the background.

For dinner I found a more a local place that tourists seems to like, you pick out your food from a few different options and find a spot on the carpeted ground with pillows, and then the owner brings out a plastic sheet to put in front of you and your plates of food are put on that so you can’t spill on the floor. The traditional eating style I guess you’d call it. I sat next to a French couple who were on a similar roadtrip (basically every tourist is on a similar roadtrip) and we were both surprised by our mismatched expectations of what this ‘mountain village’ would look like! And not in a particularly good way haha. Not exactly the vibe we were going for. And no shisha here either except for at an upscale lounge, and I’m not paying $40 to smoke shisha.

Can’t go wrong with chicken n rice. The sauce you pour on it is very tasty

The next morning I was up early as usual and made my way back over to the cliffs to watch the sunrise. Well I missed the actual sunrise, but caught the first light hitting the terraced villages further down in the canyon. There was also a very scenic layer of fog at the bottom of the valley. Then it was back on the road, I didn’t really feel like sticking around much longer, nothing was open yet and I wanted to make sure I had enough time for seeing some forts and wadi exploring, as today would be a longer day and a bit more off the beaten track.

the mosque on my street. Throw a stone and there’s a mosque

Once I got down I stopped in a coffee shop and planned out the day’s route. First stop would be the UNESCO heritage site, the Bahla Fort, originally built sometime in the 12-15th centuries in an important area for the frankincense trade, which Oman was famous for. It was renovated in the early 2010’s, although not “restored” as cement and stone were used to mostly cover up the original rocks and walls, which got quite a bit of criticism. Still, it’s a good looking place, and very few tourists. Although they give you very little information about the fort itself and almost all the rooms are empty. It felt a little low effort for being a UNESCO heritage site…

lovely interior spaces, as you can see it has a very (overly?) polished look to it

Kind of makes you want to play interior designer with all that unused shelf space

The next stop was the Jabreen Castle, built in the 1600’s by the ruling Yaruba dynasty at the time. It was originally built for the Sultan and his family, eventually turned into a government building, and now a museum. They give you a bit of info about traditional family life, but not much info on the castle itself. I guess they want you to buy the tour. But it has some very well decorated and ornate rooms and courtyards and all that.

I’m trying to take more photos of myself…

Next up was yet another UNESCO heritage site, the Al Ayn beehive tombs, a necropolis from the 3rd century BC. I was feeling lazy and didn’t make the hike up to see these things, just photographed them from below. I wanted to make sure I had enough time hike to the Wadi Damm pools, which apparently you need to hike quite a bit to get to. From this point onward the road turned into gravel and was a bit slower going. I got lost a bit trying to find the parking lot because there’s various gravel roads that don’t really show up on the map and certainly no signs. There were maybe two other cars in the parking lot. This isn’t a very touristy one!

It turns out that this wadi was mostly dry in the dry season, but it was still a very nice hike through the canyon, with a bit of rock hopping and scrambling involved to make feel a bit more adventurous, and there was still some water flowing. There were maybe two or three pools that were deep enough to swim in, so I wasn’t totally out of luck! And really I had the whole place to myself. I passed one person who was coming out, and that was the only person I saw the entire time in the whole canyon. So that was a nice way to spend a few hours in the afternoon!

First swimmable pool. It’s got a rope at the end to get you over that set of rocks

After hiking back out I drove up the steep, bumpy, unpaved road to the Jebel Shams area, Jebel Shams being the tallest mountain in Oman. I was definitely happy to have the AWD SUV for this road! The upper plateau has a great view overlooking the largest canyon in Oman, with a surprisingly nice coffeeshop to boot! Although on the other side where the sun sets I couldn’t really find a good place to take a sunset so photo… hmmph

This is all we got. It’s a rocky scrubby wasteland

Driving down. This would have been a better shot…

Lots of people stay in one of the few somewhat expensive hotels up here, or camp out, but I don’t have camping gear and I didn’t feel like paying $100+/night. Plus it’s freezing at night and nothing to do. So I drove down an hour and stayed in the town of Al Hamra, which also has an old abandoned part of town, and from there I could enjoy my whole shisha + bookreading routine, and then I ate at a famous Yemeni restaurant, which was fantastic. The camel skewers were surprisingly good! I’d be back awake at 5:30am to drive back up and catch the sunrise at 6:45! Sleep is for the weak!

Night view of the old town from my hotel rooftop

Roadtripping Days 1 -2

February 22, 2026

ROAD TRIP! No time to waste, me and my new friend Wail (Wa-eel) were up at 6, out the door by 6:30am. The Indian snack shop across the street was actually open so we ate some chapatis and dhal (basically curried lentils you dip the bread in) and then hit the road. Quick and easy. Fortunately Wail is more tech savvy than me, so he was able to get the navigation on my phone onto the car’s digital screen via Bluetooth as well as my music. I honestly did not know how to do this. Sad!

Muscat’s highways are very nice, so driving was not stressful at all. If anything I wanted to go too fast, but they have speed cameras everywhere, I’m not sure how much they’re paid attention to or enforced, but just their constant presence was a big enough deterrent to not go over the 120 km/h speed limit, or 75mph. At least their locations show up on google maps. Coming out of Muscat you had to climb some mountains, but once you get past that part it was pretty flat and smooth sailing along the coast, with mountains all in the background towards the interior.

First stop was the Bimmah Sinkhole, which looks pretty much like you’d expect, a big hole in the ground with water in it. We were the second ones there and after some debate, decided to go for a swim, as it’s cool to have it all to yourselves and it would probably wake us up a bit. It was cool, as in cold! Fortunately Wail carries around a mug of hot coffee, so this was was a good coffee spot as well.

Next up was the famous Wadi Shab, probably the most famous natural attraction in all of Oman. Wadi just means canyon, but the ones that show up google maps usually imply a hikeable river canyon with swimming. Although some do dry up in the dry season. For this one you have to hop on a boat to cross the river, then hike 30 minutes, then you get to a spot where the canyon tightens and you basically swim, wade, and walk your way through this beautiful canyon. There’s even a little hidden cave you can swim into. The whole area is a very popular spot though, so you certainly do not have it to yourselves. There’s a bunch of Indian tour groups to contend with, and they’re not small.

Of course having to swim through a canyon means you need to leave your stuff behind, so people who were well prepared brought dry bags along for the swim. Me and Wail didn’t want to leave all our stuff behind, an overabundance of caution perhaps, as theft like this isn’t really a thing in Oman. But just in case, we just went through the canyon one by one. The whole place was a lot of fun and I can see why it’s on everyone’s tourist itinerary. Great spot to hang out for a few hours. On the way back we lost our return trip boat tickets and the guy wanted us to pay again, but Wail said a few words in Arabic and problem solved. Very nice having an Arabic speaker around.

After that we went to a local shisha place for a bit and then found something to eat. We went to, I believe an Egyptian run place and split the good ole, trusty standby – the mixed grill. Before we ordered Wail was asking the owner a bunch of questions about the food, and I guess the owner didn’t like that much, and told him he was personally insulted. Which was interesting to me because I don’t think I’ve ever had a conversation at a restaurant which invoked such strong feelings over asking about the food. Or at least having those feeling said out loud! We’ll chalk it up to cultural differences! Wail went to apologize after dinner haha.

The next day Wail would be taking the bus back to Muscat as he’s already done a bunch of my itinerary, and I’d be continuing onwards to the interior of the country to the sand dunes of Wahiba Sands more specifically. And doing what I’d be doing most afternoons, finding a wadi to go hike and swim!

The wadi on the way to Wahiba Sands is also a touristy one, and apparently they’re doing construction all around it, building some sort of tourist facilities – ewww, wadis are supposed to be natural places! And the reviews online were not great. But still I had a lot of time to kill, and I didn’t see anywhere else interesting on the map to visit, so I was still going. And despite the construction, you could still find some very pretty sections of the river to swim and have by yourself if you did a little rock scrambling to get down! But yeah, you just had to listen to the gentle sounds of jackhammers in the background. So overall not the nicest wadi to visit, but still some beautiful sections of water.

Back to the highway and next up was figuring out how to get to the desert camp. First I had to pull into the gas station to lower my tire pressure down to 18 psi. There was already someone at the air station, but there was also a guy in the parking lot who offered to do it for me for 1 real, $2.50, which felt kind of silly because it should be something really easy to do myself, but whatever, this enterprising young man can have my business. Down to 18 psi, I guess the ideal tire pressure for driving on sand.

I had time for some coffee, where some guys tried to poach me from my desert camp to theirs, but I wasn’t falling for it! The desert camp I had booked had warned me about this! Soon I found the office and then I’d be following the guide into the sand dunes and onto the desert camp. I was a little worried about this because I’d never driven on sand before! The first part was easy, we were just driving in a flat valley, but then we eventually turned up into the dunes. I was warned I needed to punch it, and we got to the steep uphill part, that was also quite bumpy, and I had the accelerator pressed to floor, but I started losing momentum, slowing down, no, noo, nooooo! Stuck!

The guide had to come back to my car, I pushed from the front as he reversed and we went in reverse down the hill, and he did this section for me. You really need to pick up a lot of speed BEFORE getting to steep uphill part! And then just eat all the bumps. Just don’t lose any speed! Once you lose that momentum you’re doomed no matter how hard you press on the gas. Live and learn. From the top of that hill I got back in the drivers seat and it wasn’t too bad getting to camp after that. It’s a pretty basic setup, a bunch of very thick, sturdy, tent type structures with beds and bathrooms attached, a bonfire area, and a big shaded platform. That’s the whole camp!

In the big shaded platform I met some of the guests, an Austrian couple and Dutch/Moroccan couple who were both friendly. The Dutch/Moroccan couple was a quantum physicist and PHD in climate science. Like come on! The Austrian couple had booked two nights, which they had kind of regretted, as there really is nothing to do all day. Sand dunes are good for one sunset and one sunrise, imo, that’s all you need! I had some time to read my book before sunset, as I didn’t sign up for either of the two activities, dune buggy or camel ride. Spending 30 minutes on a camel in India was enough to know that I don’t really need to be on a camel again. And I was particularly interested in reading this book (Celestial Bodies) as it was the first book in Arabic to win the Man Booker prize, and it’s by an Omani author set in Oman. Eventually around sunset it was off to hike around the dunes and take some photos. I don’t get many chances to do dune photography, but it is pretty fun, the play of light and shadows gives many opportunities for interesting photo compositions! But the light is only right for a short window of time before the sun sets. Or right after it rises.

How dare these people to have walked where I want to take photos!

So that was fun. Dinner was at 7, and it was excellent, tons of stuff to choose from, the usual middle eastern fare with lots of grilled meats and kebabs, rice, bread, hummus, salad, pita etc. Everyone just sits on the floor together. And then after that was the bonfire where our hosts told us all about Bedouin desert life, how people survive in the desert, how it’s changed it modern times, etc. Then they sang us some Bedouin music, which started slow at first and then eventually became a bit of a dance party for a little bit. So it was a pretty fun camp. Very highly rated spot.

Next morning was off again tramping around the dunes bright and early at sunrise, then a very large breakfast, and that was about it for the desert camp. A nice experience! I followed the guide back into town, no getting stuck this time! I had to fill up the tires again and then I was back on the highway for the roadtrip to continue!

Other cheaper camps are down in the valley, which is lame

Playing with the shadows. I like this one

Cool spot!

The White City: Muscat

February 14, 2026

As I’ve mentioned, in backpacking circles, most people don’t have great things to say about some of the places I’ve just been, but everyone, and I do mean everyone has had great things to say about Oman. Doing a roadtrip around the country is the thing I’d REALLY been looking forward to most on this 15 day trip. The big city is stuff is fine/whatever. I’m not that much of a city guy, just small doses, getting out into the country is where all the fun and adventure is at! From the photos I’ve seen, Oman is a surprising stunning looking country compared to some of it’s Gulf counterparts. And there’s less ethical concerns as Oman is sometimes called the Switzerland of the Middle East as they stay out of everyone’s business and often act as mediators. So I was very excited to be heading there.

Muscat has quite a different feel from the other cities I’ve been to! For one thing, it’s got quite a bit smaller population, 1.7 million compared the 4 million of Abu Dhabi and Dubai. There’s only 5 million people in the whole country, (and over 50% are actual Omani). The interesting thing about Muscat is there are basically no skyscrapers. The rule for almost all buildings is that they are capped at five stories! How crazy is that? And most buildings are mandated to be painted white to keep a consistent cultural, traditional aesthetic. The lack up building upwards means the city is super spread out, so it makes it somewhat difficult deciding where to stay, because everything is so far away from each other and the bus system is not good.

One of the things I wanted to do was a one day island snorkeling trip, and the marina for that is also very close to the airport, there’s a bus there, and there’s also one of the very few hostels around, so that’s where I decided to stay. Al Mouj it’s called. Although the specific marina part is the most expensive part of town, so I stayed a bit outside of that, but it was still a very nice neighborhoods, not really many tourists, mostly locals and expats, with some fancy pants houses that looked something like this…

pretty typical styling, they love having everything walled off

But the marina, they’re going more luxury apartments overlooking the water for people with their boats/yachts and building it up a lot

Al Mouj Marina - not my photo. It’s very posh though. They might be more lenient on the 5 story rule here…

I think Muscat is also a pretty much a one day and done city, but with the addition of the boat trip I would have a full two days in Muscat. I was up bright and early for the 8am start to the snorkel trip. I was a bit surprised at how crowded the boat was and how international the crowd was! Everyone was tourists! It seemed like so far on this trip I had met very few actual, 100% tourists, so many people seemed to be there for work related purposes, so this was a nice change of pace.

It was about an hour to get out to the Daymaniyat Islands, which is cluster of islands, and they were very pretty. Well, the water around them was very pretty, the islands were mostly brown and rocky outcroppings. We did two snorkel spots with an ‘beach’ break in between, and a very nice lunch set up with pita and kebabs and hummus and labneh and vegetables and lots of stuff. I think some people were just there for the lunch! Then we got in round two of snorkeling. It was good, lots of turtles the first trip and then a few black tipped reef sharks on the second. No underwater photos though…

Then I had some time to hang out at the hostel, definitely an interesting crew. The wifi there was very good, so a few of the people were digital nomads, living on the cheap. Most were not from western countries, someone from Sudan, Egypt, Morocco, Russia, an Estonian girl learning Arabic, etc. Not much interest in road tripping though.

sunset at the nearest beach which involved a good 30 minutes of walking around construction sites.

People use many of the beaches to free camp and 4x4, in stark contrast to UAE and Qatar

oooh there’s the sunset. You’ll notice how much of Oman is just open space, dirt, nothing

Lamb dish. Actually from an Iraqi restaurant, but you eat a lot of lamb in Oman

The next morning I took the bus out to the Sultan Qaboos mosque, which involved walking 35 minutes to the bus stop, waiting 20 minutes, the actual bus ride, and then another 20 minute walk to Muscat’s biggest tourist attraction. WTF, they can’t drop you off there? Needless to say taking the bus in Muscat sucks. I’m not even sure why I do it when it’s not that expensive to take a ride share app. For the love of the game I guess. Logistical problem solving? I like walking?

When I was walking out the door I realized I forgot to wear pants, but it was hot outside and I’d be walking around and every mosque I’ve ever been to if you don’t have the proper attire they will give you some sort of cover up for free or for a small fee, like a sarong, so no biggie. Ha!

Well when I got there I found out that I could not enter the mosque unless I rented their full length traditional dress, the dishdasha. Oh man I was NOT very jazzed about this. I’ll tape a piece of fabric over my calves or something. But what choice did I have? So I very begrudgingly paid the stupid $15 or whatever to rent it, and had to try on three to get one to fit right, probably on account of my big bulging muscles. The material is just not very flexible. I did neglect to wear the traditional cap though cap, but it hindsight I probably should have just committed to the whole bit.

So finally I was on my way into the mosque feeling quite silly. But at least the mosque was mostly empty and peaceful. And as you guys know I hate taking photos of myself, but I guess I might as well get a photo with this thing on hahaha. I found a Korean guy taking timer selfies with a tripod, so I asked him, and of course he did the very Asian thing of having me pose in like 10 different ways! Okay, okay okay. So that was an interesting experience at the mosque. Beautiful place btw. It helps for photos that I got there right when it opened. Also I’m sure this is very relevant future advice for for many readers, DO NOT try to run in a dishdasha! I tried to jog up some stairs and there is just not enough room in the fabric and nearly wiped out.

gotta get that looking away side pose with the sun shining on my face lol

Then I had some time to kill before getting back to the airport to pick up my rental car. I normally don’t rent cars, as I like my scooters and places with public transportation, but in Oman it’s basically a necessity, and most people recommend getting a 4x4 or AWD for the mountain roads or driving on sand, so that’s what I did. Not cheap! Especially for just one person. But my cousin’s husband is pretty high up at Enterprise, and can give friends and family discounts, and wouldn’t you know it, there’s an Enterprise at the Muscat Airport! So that knocked around 1/3 of the price off, so thanks Pat! I would be getting a 2025 Hyundai Tucson AWD. Nice!

I wouldn’t start the road trip that day, but I wanted to check out the famous Muttrah Souk, which is on the far end of town, so maybe 35 minutes driving with no traffic, and basically impossible to get to by public transportation, so the car was very useful. Although I’m not used to new cars, so it was a little intimidating for me with the bells and whistles, I was afraid to touch anything. And the Forward Neutral Reverse is a rotating knob, which I very much did not like. The driving was smooth though.

The edge of the city approaching. And taking photos driving, like a boss….

Anyway, the Muttrah Souk is at the far south end of town where they can’t build anymore because you run into the mountains. Oman is very mountainous. There’s also a bit of hiking around and fort that overlooks the bay and the mountains around here. The fort was actually built by the Portuguese in the 1580’s as it has a very advantageous military position overlooking the entrance to the bay. Portugal ruled Oman for about 150 years in the 15 and 1600’s apparently. There’s nothing special about the fort but it is a good spot to watch the sunset!

The Muttrah Souk is Oman’s oldest and some say it’s the oldest marketplace in the world, so that’s quite the selling point, even if it did start to feel like I was getting souk fatigue. And I really do love that souk smell when you’re walking around, you really know you’re in an Arabic country. Its fun, it’s different. And I like the little alleyways when you get away from the main section of the souk. But I didn’t linger for too long because I always feel bad walking around getting called over to various shops and not planning on buying anything.

Back at the hostel I was talking again with the Sudanese Dutch guy (mostly Dutch) named Wail and he was interested in joining for the very first part of the roadtrip, so sure, of course! I have a whole 5 seater car to myself. And he speaks Arabic, which is awesome and super helpful. I wanted to start early, so we’d up at 6am to start at 6:30, for what would hopefully be the highlight of this whole trip, a one week road trip around the supposedly beautiful country of Oman.

The More Laid Back Capital City: Abu Dhabi

February 11, 2026

A 2.5 hour, not very exciting bus ride gets you to Abu Dhabi. Not shockingly there’s a lot of flat, boring desert scenery in between. Getting into Abu Dhabi you can feel quite a different vibe. It’s the capital city and known being the cultural capital and quite a bit less exciting. There’s wide boulevards with less traffic, as opposed to Dubai’s sprawling highway systems that are impossible to cross for pedestrians. There’s also no metro, so you have to take buses everywhere, which is a bit annoying. There’s way less skyscrapers except for the waterfront. Much more worn out pastel colors as opposed to metallic building materials. Everything felt a touch older. The bus station we arrived into looks like it’s from the 70’s and painted in an avocado green, although it is nice and modern on the inside. That’s not to say there isn’t a lot of money that get’s spent by the sheikh in Abu Dhabi!

My particular neighborhood seemed to be the Filipino part of town, complete with a Jollibees. Filipino expat food is much more expensive than Indian expat food! And not as good. Sorry Filipinos- but you just can’t use hot dogs as a normal ingredient in your dishes! I walked around my part of town, and it was not particularly exciting, not even any nice coffee shops, but you could get 33 cent (tiny) paper cups of chai from Indian snack places! I didn’t wait around to head out, the first destination would Abu Dhabi’s self dubbed version of the Louvre! From all looks, it appeared be gorgeous. They’re also making their own version of the Guggenheim, but maybe come up with your own name??

It’s really cool how it sits out on the water

I must admit though, for the actual displays, while they had some very nice stuff, it seemed like mostly a super random hodgepodge of stuff from antiquity, with not a lot of signage explaining things. And there didn’t seem to be a coherent direction to follow. Without enough things to read it too me only 1.5 hours to get through the whole thing. I won’t bore you with any photos of the museum artwork.

The view when you leave the main part of the museum

But, like I said, the place is a stunning piece of architecture, I was much more interested in taking photographs of their public spaces, because they are indeed splendid. An their waterfront viewing area is certainly a place worthy of an $8 cappuccino. I spent a good long time walking around this non-museum section of the museum, which is indeed massive. For example Chicago’s Art Museum has way better works of art, but it can feel old, cramped and stuffy inside compared to this…

It’s also a popular spot for instagrammers, which I didn’t get any myself, but I did creep on a few people getting them taken Everyone waits in line for one specific spot, which you’ll see, as it’s like a catwalk/runway

Ahhh neat architecture spaces are fun. After that it was on the bus and time to catch the sunset somewhere. I didn’t have anywhere in mind so I headed to the waterfront promenade, which runs for many kilometers.Very nicely done. Although no clouds to light up the sky, and not particularly great views of the skyline from this angle, but it was a nice relaxing stroll with lots of people out fishing or exercising. A shocking amount of people fishing, which is actually kind of annoying as you have to avoid their lines. But as usual in the gulf states, it’s still pleasant, well built, well maintained place

it does have a pretty empty feeling to it, there should be more people around, it’s a lovely night

kids playing cricket in front of the very well lit mosque

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Then it was some more wandering and then off to a shisha cafe to to do some reading. I have been reading a lot of the gulf history, being British protectorates, all the oil and gas discovery, the uniting of the emirates, how each country gets along. One thing that really blows my mind about the history of these countries is just how little there was here 50 years ago or whatever. Abu Dhabi developed first, before Dubai, as it discovered oil first and also had the resources in place to develop it, and Dubai developed before Doha. Qatar is like the late comer (as they eventually found a bunch of natural gas reserves) that nobody really likes for it’s ties with Iran and Al Jazeera broadcasting among others, but just look at this photo from then and now, absolutely crazy stuff.

Although what I should have been reading more about was the touristy things to do in Abu Dhabi. There’s a mosque called the Sheikh Zayed mosque, which is supposed to be possibly the prettiest contempory mosques in the world (2007) and I managed to get it confused with the National Palace. The mosque is way outside of the city, while the National Palace is much more centrally located spot - and it also looks amazing, and has 20,000+ reviews on Google, and so I thought that’s what I was looking for because I’m an idiot.

So early in the morning, that’s where I took the bus to. And it was a beautiful piece of architecture. I mean just look at the photos. It’s where they host all the foreign dignitaries. But I thought something seemed odd, and yet net, it never hit me I was in the wrong place! What a brain fart. But still, hard to complain too much here, and I was one of the first ones there. It’s another place that feels like it should have more people!

Then I had some to time to kill during the day, and I packed by swim trunks and towel, so I thought I’d mosey on to the beach. Not a very walkable part of of the city, they had that building pictured below in a place that gets zero pedestrians. Anyway there was a private beach at the Hilton Hotel (friggen everywhere around here is a private beach) but I just moseyed on in an bought an over priced smoothie and the workers seemed cool with that.

random nice buildings that I don’t think anyone ever goes to

small section of beach for the high end hotels

Even this crappy looking beach was a private beach

So last up was the far end of the corniche which is supposed have good views of the skyline and the National Palace and whatever this huge exclusive building is supposed to be

One more of the Royal Palace lit up at night

Then of course a bit more wandering around, which you kind of have to do with no metro and a bus system that stops early. Here were some photos I thought were interesting

The next morning was my flight to Muscat, Oman, (apparently the buses were all booked up days in advance) and wouldn’t you know it, what I saw looking out my window was that big beautiful enormous all-white perfect looking mosque not far off in the distance. Arghhh! Just to rub it in. So that was probably my biggest travel screw-up since somehow not seeing the Sphinx in Egypt.

Here’s the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque in case you’re wondering. Sigh

A Pretty Polarizing City: Dubai

February 2, 2026

I must say, among backpacking type travel communities, Dubai is not very well liked. Many people think of it as fake, gaudy, materialistic, expensive, what have you. Kind of like the Las Vegas of the Middle East, plus throw in some extra criticism of foreign worker abuse and racial discrimination. For what it’s worth, I actually like Las Vegas, and am always a little skeptical of online consensus, which often disparages or reduces a lot of countries I like traveling to into complete stereotypes, (India for example), or can’t seem to separate the government from the people, so I was interested in giving Dubai a fair shake.

Plus what you hear online skews so much more to negative experiences, horror stories, scams, racism etc, than with your normal everyday ok/good/pretty nice encounters that make up 99% of the time, so reading places like Reddit, I always take with a grain of salt. Seriously social media can make you a bit paranoid or give you some pretty horrible impressions. It’s good to know about the dangers/annoyances of the country, but our brains are not equipped for it 24/7. Someone will make a “UAE/India/Morrocco/Egypt is awful” post, then a hundred people come in and agree (out of tens or hundreds of thousands reading) and now you think those places might be the most awful dangerous hellholes in the world.

Anyway, it was a quick one hour flight to get from Doha to Dubai, clear skies, easy trip. The first thing you notice about landing in Dubai is the immigration line is much longer than in Doha. I think it took a solid 45 minutes to get through, although I wasn’t even asked any questions by immigration, basically just stamped right in. They give you a free SIM card upon arrival, sweet! Except it didn’t work and directs you to paid plans. Hmm. It actually randomly started working 12 hours later.

The next annoying thing is that there is no machine to buy their metro/bus card, you have to buy it from an actual person at a booth. And it’s one person working with a long line. What year is this? I thought Dubai was supposed to be like technologically advanced? The metro is MUCH more crowded than Doha! Dubai is a hopping place apparently! Although you can always buys the VIP metro card which gets you into the first car on the train separated from all the rest…

Since I’m cheap I stayed in Old Dubai, which I guess is also where all the South Asians live, and my room, which was marketed as a “capsule hotel” was basically just a hostel. There was no signage whatsoever (you had to communicate through whatsapp for them to get you in) and I’m guessing this place might not be technically legal. While the room was actually relatively nice and redone recently with electronic codes for all the doors and lockers, but the building was very old and in terrible shape, and even for someone who is well traveled my “this place is creepy AF” meter was definitely going off when I walked in. If I was a solo female traveler I might have balked. There was also a notice from the city about an investigation and fines for overcrowding and having apartments over capacity. South Asians are pretty famous for this, sleeping 10 people in a room or whatever, hmm sounds familiar. So anyway, not the best first impression, but you get what you pay for in Dubai

I took a little rest in my bed and then had a walk around town. My specific part of town basically feels like you’re in India! Or South Asia more specifically. There’s lassi stands and biryani places and dosa shops and everyone is from India, Pakistan, or Bangladesh. It’s kind of interesting how they are all somewhat forced to live in harmony together despite their national hatreds of one another! I had a chicken kathi roll for lunch and chatted with a guy from Kerala (India), and in general the foreign workers all very friendly and speak great English, really everyone is a foreigner here! Once again, just an odd dynamic in these gulf states. I think about 15% of UAE are actual Emiratis, so just slightly more than Qatar at 12%, but Dubai is even less I believe. Qatar and UAE are also the richest of the Gulf States per capita, fwiw.

Unfortunately the Old Dubai Museum was closed for renovations, but I did get a walk around their “old town” which feels like it’s just been built in the last couple years. Nobody lives there, it’s really just for tourists. Kinda reminiscent of some of China’s “ancient towns”. I was not particularly impressed by this, and eventually found my way to the metro stop, where I’d go to the end of the line and then hop on a ferry to a spot called Dubai Creek Harbor, which is supposed to be a nice sunset spot, a bit further out from the downtown, on the creek, which runs through Dubai. It’s much more like a very wide river, and not so much like a creek though.

My one photo of the old town, at least the mosque is actually in use

Once again Dubai is bustling place! There was a line for the ferry and I missed the first one because it filled up too quickly, so waiting for the second one I almost missed the sunset! Although it’s not really the best sunset spot, it’s more about the seeing the skyline light up after the sun sets. And overall the Dubai Creek Harbor is a very nice place, high end condos/high rises, fancy restaurants, lovely public spaces, although my cappuccino was $10. The view of the skyline is great, and you can really tell how much the Burj Khalifa just towers over everything. I walked around here for an hour or so, but after seeing coffee prices, I wasn’t particularly inclined to stay for dinner. Nice spot, but just not much reason to stick around, which is how I feel about Dubai in general! I took the ferry back, found a nice shisha place to relax and read, got back to Old Dubai to eat some ridiculously large shawarma platter that cost like $4, and bedtime.

What it looks like arriving in Dubai Creek Harbor

I actually did sleep in a little the next day, until 8:30am or so. I was hoping the souks would be open when I was walking around, but I think Sunday mornings they might not open until later. I found somewhere to eat a masala dosa and chai for like $3 - which is insane btw, imagine going out to eat breakfast in what is generally thought of as a high cost of living country for $3! Definitely not happening in the US! I then found a legit nice coffee shop to get a cappuccino which cost like $7, these price discrepancies are wild if it’s a “high class place” or local place. By local, I mean foreign worker place. But I had some time to kill. 10am is when the Al Shindagha Museum opens, which is an open air museum, a collection of 20-something different houses, usually just the traditional brick/adobe kind, that all house some sort of exhibit about Dubai’s history, or customs, handcrafts, perfumes, poetry, clothes, etc, tons of different stuff. It goes through the old days, the pearl farming, recession (apparently Japanese pearls are way better and killed the pearl market) the decision to dredge the creek to allow bigger boats through, and how Dubai started quickly modernizing, except it doesn’t mention much about oil or gas!

So it’s a little bit of “look how awesome we are and our sheikhs are all geniuses”, like yeah, you found a shitload of oil! But still good on them for providing for their citizens unlike somewhere like Venezuela, and really it’s an amazingly well put together museum, beautiful displays, tons of info, all in English and Arabic, it leads you through each exhibit very well. For example in the perfume house, they have buttons you press that shoot a perfumed mist into the air you can smell what they’re talking about, great stuff. I spent over three hours there, and only made it through 2/3 of the houses! I never spend more than 2.5 hours at a museum, that’s usually my brain’s breaking point.

This is the room where you smell the perfumes

I only had only one afternoon to go downtown and check out the Burj, so it was off to the nearby metro stop and onto to the city center. Definitely no spots to sit on the train, Dubai is busy all the time. I took the train one stop further past the Burj Khalifa stop and then walked back towards it. The whole area is high rise condos with more and more coming up. You gotta hand it to Dubai, they’ve done well for themselves, making it the regional hub of business and commerce, and it only seems to be getting more popular. If you invested in some real estate before covid, you’ve done very well for yourself.

First view out of the metro, looking away from the Burj

I had no real plans for this afternoon, it was mostly just to wander around the whole plaza that encircles the Burj Khalifa. There’s a manmade lake with lots of café and restaurants on it, with great views, and even greater prices. I enquired about the one place that I saw had shisha and it was $65. GTFO. There’s also a huge mall that is one of the largest indoor shopping centers in the world, complete with an indoor water, ice rink, aquarium, kid’s playhouses, a VR park, a Chinatown, you name it. So that’s where I spent most of my afternoon, the mall! Exciting!

lots of new (and interesting) construction going on

Sadly I did not get this instagram photo for myself. Random note: lens distortion with the Burj Khalifa is a pain in the ass

And no, I did not go to the top of the Burj Khalifa. I’ve learned that places that tower over everything actually have pretty unexciting views, like the Tokyo Skytree. And it’s like $50 to go to floor 125, and something stupid like $110 to go up to 148. Ridiculous. What I wanted instead was a view from a high up rooftop bar overlooking the Burj Khalifa instead. I googled a few and decided on the Shangri La, which is like 2km away, which is a good distance because the Burj is so tall that you don’t want to be right near it, because then it’s just a photo of you looking straight upwards at this one building.

How many photos can you take of one single building??

Walking there was not easy though, as these cities can be very pedestrian unfriendly when you have to get around some of the main roads or big highways. When I got there I learned that one bar of the skybar was closed for a private event (the best part for photography as it turned out) but the other one was open. Uhh okay. Well I just walked 40 minutes to get here, so I’m going up. And the view was excellent! But you could tell that you couldn’t get the full panoramic view, as part of the building was in the way, which was a bit of bummer. If I wasn’t a photographer, that part wouldn’t have fazed me one bit, as the view of the Burj and the downtown was seriously stunning, there were nice sunset colors, and watching all the lights turn on and the sky getting that nice dark blue was great. Really gorgeous up there. And almost no people. You do pay for the view though, my one drink for the trip, the cheapest they had, was a beer for $24! I was originally going to get a glass of wine, but it was $45! WTF. This is the type of thing that people hate about Dubai, the type of pricing that signals “this is for rich people only!”

Sunset photo on the way there! That highway on the right was not easy to get over

Entrance to the Shangri La, the colors are starting to come out. It’s good luck when you actually get clouds in the desert!

Still lots of construction, even away from the city center

And that was most of the the Dubai trip. I wandered around some more, smoked some shisha, took some more photos of the impeccably lit architecture, randomly found the lobby for the museum of the future, which is super cool looking. I did skip this museum because everyone on the UAE forums says it’s overrated and overpriced ($43), and like half of it is for kids. But the lobby was sweet!

Then went back to Old Dubai to eat some Indian food, and that was about it! Oh and I bought some Dubai chocolate, which seems to be picking up in popularity these days. They’ve managed to combine chocolate, with kunafa, a popular middle eastern dessert (called the Queen of middle eastern desserts) - pistachio kunafa in particular, and it is pretty god damn delicious. Especially with dark chocolate. I don’t think Dubai has the best chocolate, but the combination of flavors works really well together. In the US we really don’t use pistachio enough. And in case you’re wondering what the king of middle eastern desserts is, that would be the baklava!

Honestly delicious. Kinda pricey though, $10 for a chocolate bar. Probably paid too much

So that was 1.5 days in Dubai, which is really all I needed. I mostly just wanted to see the place, but not really do the overpriced touristy type stuff. I mean sure I could have gone to the museum of the future, the indoor snow skiing park, the Palms at Jumeiria, where they created all that artificial land that juts out into the water to form the shape of a palm leaf, etc. But nahh, not really my thing, I was pretty happy with 1.5 days to see the place. And not give too much money to the UAE government, because they are definitely involved in some shady shit, but I got to see what I wanted to see. And I can’t really disagree with the backpacker sentiment that Dubai is kinda fake and overhyped, but it really doesn’t have to be, and it’s still a very cool place just to see for a day or two. If you’re on a budget, just stay in Old Dubai! And there’s a big bus station in Old Dubai which makes it very easy to hop on a bus directly to Abu Dhabi. And I guess you do have to hand it to Dubai, they have done an excellent diversifying their economy into being the region’s business and tourism hub.

One Very Full Day in Doha

January 29, 2026

So the morning run and spending time on the waterfront was very pleasant, then it was back to the hotel to shower up and get my day plans sorted out.

Next stop would be visiting the nearby souk (traditional market) and getting some breakfast. While there are plenty of restaurants, it mainly functions as a market. They sell basically everything in the souk, and they have a very very distinct smell, which really gives you that sense of place, as there is always incense burning and wafting around. This part of the world is famous for its frankincense. Plus you have all the spices, dates, perfume shops, just lots of lovely and very particularly fragrant smells walking around these middle eastern souks. I really enjoy it. And the vendors were not pushy at all, it was nothing like being in a souk in Egypt for instance. The perfume shops give you free strips of their popular fragrances without even trying to wrangle you into their shops. And this souk had a bird market too, which seemed pretty random to me.

Gonna need a translation here on what kinda shop is on this corner

The main walking street running through it was where all the restaurants were, and I googled traditional Qatari breakfast, but I could not seem to find what I was looking for. Turkish breakfast, Lebanese breakfast, Yemeni breakfast, but I couldn’t find Qatari breakfast! I ended up at a shakshuka place, which is still a middle eastern breakfast, but more from the N African or the Levant region. Oh well. It was still delicious. And expensive, as this souk is also a very touristy place. Not US expensive though. Even Qatar isn’t US expensive.

The main walking street. Interesting choice of statues here

In terms of food, Qatar is kind of like Australia, they don’t have a lot of dishes that are distinctly Qatari. But food from the entire region is great, so they borrow a lot of other middle eastern or north African dishes. Plus the foreign workers all bring along their own cuisines so you’ll find lots of Pakistani, Indian, Nepalese, Bangladeshi, and Filipino restaurants as well.

Next up would be the Museum of Islamic Art, which is new-ish (2008), has beautiful architecture, and located right on the waterfront. Very well done exhibits, impeccable lighting, a great place to spend an hour and a half during the middle of the day. My knowledge of this part of the world is actually quite limited, so I did enjoy learning a bit of the history, rise of Islam, the changes in art and language in different Caliphates, etc. Although I had to choose between this museum and the National Museum of Qatar, where I’m sure I would have learned more of the history stuff, but I have a short attention span and I like looking at pretty things. So I spent a bit of extra time on wikipedia for the history lessons, the tribal history, surving in the desert, pearl farming, being a British protectorate (gotta protect that India spice route), Independence, finding oil etc.

At least three taxis asked me if I need a ride while walking towards the museum, a minute away from it lol

those people taking photos directly upwards would be me in a few moments

I need a wider angle lens. But Islamic Architecture is very pleasing to the eye

And now I will bore you with some random shots of pieces in the museum

I asked someone to take a photo of me, which I hate doing, and then they always turn out crappy to boot. SquintySunEyes.jpg

Later on I would head to the Katara cultural village, which, I’m not sure if it was because it was late afternoon (lots of places don’t get crowded till after sunset) or what, but it was boring as hell, and I honestly couldn’t figure out what exactly I was supposed to do there? The amphitheater was closed for setting up a concert and I felt like I walked around the whole place in 20 minutes. Surely I missed something. I ended up strolling the waterfront with empty beaches and then hopping back on the metro a few kilometers south, which involved crossing a highway with no crosswalks, it felt like being in certain parts of the US with many parts of the town not designed at all for pedestrians! Then I was back into the strange downtown area.

Some of the deserted beaches. Low 70’s is not yet beach weather I think

The downtown has so many big buildings, but so few people actually walking around, or even looking like they were going in or out of these big skyscrapers. It feels like they were built for people to use eventually, but just not yet. It feels like Doha is prepping itself ahead of time for something like Dubai style growth, or something along those lines. Walking around downtown was also uneventful, but I did get some nice photos back on the corniche as the sun was setting and the lights of the buildings were turning on. Gorgeous skyline.

I need to stop taking photos of the dhows

Being my first full day of travel and still full of energy I decided to hop back on the train and go further north, to the Pearl District, more specifically the Qanat Quartier, which they call the Venice of the Middle East. Although my metro card wouldn’t work on the bus needed to take you there, and buses seemed to be infrequent, so I just walked a few miles, and this wealthy part of Doha is definitely not set up well for walking! Like many places around the world, the rich seem to limit public transit in certain areas to keep the riffraff out. But they weren’t keeping me out!

Finally getting to the walkable canals, looks like a nice spot to live!

As I walked there everything was super nice (besides the lack of sidewalks), beautiful apartment buildings with perfectly manicured yards and gardens (it’s literally insane how many foreign workers they have all around the city doing landscaping, yardword, sweeping, glass cleaning etc. There was an absolutely stunning looking mosque. Many of the apartments were on the water with small marinas and boats, and eventually you get to the very walkable part where the buildings have a more European style and there’s a few canals running through the area ( which is how it has it’s nickname) with shops and restaurants, but I’d say the Qanat Quartier was pretty underwhelming for how much walking I did to get there! Felt kinda like Fort Lauderdale. A nice spot for rich people to drive their boats around.

Kinda creepy beach view of the Lusail building. If I wasn’t so tired I would have liked to check that building out

The bus stop, motion activated doors, air conditioning, tv playing. That’s a nice bus stop!

I’m sure it would be a very nice sport to live, international and cosmopolitan, there were upscale Japanese, Argentinian, Korean, Peruvian, Thai restaurants, but very little that seemed ‘Qatari’. And god damn it I want to eat at least one Qatari staple dish in the country, so I would eventually work my way back to the waqif souk, which should have ‘traditional’ Qatari food. Although I had to walk back to the train station, so all in all it ended up being 50k steps on the day! Yikes. But I wasn’t really in any hurry, and the nice thing about Arab countries is that everything is open late, almost nothing closes before 11 or midnight. Plenty of places open until 3am or so.

I eventually got back to the souk, and it was packed! Like every restaurant you looked at seemed to be fully jammed. Part of this is the weather, because once it gets to summer you can’t even eat outside because it’s just too hot. This time of year the weather is gorgeous, low 70’s in the day, high 50’s at night. I kind of hate being a solo diner when every place is full. It felt like this in Rome.

I soon found a spot at place that advertised “Traditional Qatari Food”. Great! Although I put that in quotes because almost every place that advertises like this are tourists traps, and yeahh this one was too, but I didn’t care, I wanted to sample some traditional Qatari dishes, which I did! They were served in small cheap tins, cafeteria style, from precooked buffet trays in back of the restaurant, and way overpriced, but god damn it, I was finally eating food from the country that I was actually in! It was fine, the chicken majboos dish and the chickpea dish were good, but I knew I was definitely not getting the finest example of the country’s cuisine. Oh well. When you do as little pre-planning as I do, you have to accept everything isn’t always going to be perfect.

That photo wasn’t a picture of my food, which looked much worse, but that’s chicken majboos, the national dish of Qatar .

So that was my two nights and one whole day in Qatar. I finished up in an Egyptian run shisha café, then off to bed pretty early and I flew out early the next morning to the next stop, Dubai.

A New Part of the World, The Gulf Countries: Doha, Qatar

January 29, 2026

Alrighty, the blog is back! Normally I fly over the Pacific to get to Cambodia but I thought I’d switch things up and fly over the Atlantic this time around. I booked a Qatar Airlines flight to Dubai with a two night layover in Doha. With plans to visit Abu Dhabi as well and then Oman.

After a 13 hour flight with purposely no sleep, I landed in Doha around 6pm, a bit after the sunset. I didn’t realize how early the sun sets in the gulf states, around 5:30 or 5:45, so it was already mostly dark when I landed.

Everything was very smooth, the flight was on time, immigration was easy, I was in and out of the airport very quickly. The airport is connected to the metro, and it was super easy to buy a metro ticket, it’s a flat price no matter how far you’re going, which makes things easy, no worrying about trying to find your exact stop or anything like that. And it’s like $1. There’s also the option for a day pass, which is great, maybe $3. I can’t imagine they make any money from their metro, but a country with a jillion dollars in natural gas reserves can subsidize a few things! The airport train comes every 8 minutes. You just have to make sure you don’t go into the ladies only section of the metro, but no worries, there were very people around anyway. About 30 minutes of train, which included one quick transfer, and then 10 minutes of walking and I was at my hotel. About as seamless as it gets! Well without taking a taxi of course. But overall a nice first impression.

The nice thing about Qatar Airlines is they let you choose how many days stopover you’d like in Doha and your stopover includes discounted hotel prices with affiliated hotels, so two nights seemed about right (nobody raves about all the cool things to do in Doha) and the hotel I was staying at was $40 per night instead of $75. The first thing that struck me walking to the hotel was just how quiet the area was. There were a few other hotels around, a few convenience stores and casual Indian/Pakistani restaurants, but there was hardly anyone walking on the streets, few cars, lots of parking spaces, just an empty kind of feeling. It didn’t feel like much of a residential area, just a hotel zone.

Check in was easy, I put my stuff down, and then basically headed right back out to check out a bit of the city. I knew I’d only have a few hours before the adrenaline of getting into a completely new place wore off and I’d crash pretty hard, after over 24 hours of no sleep. The closest interesting place to my hotel was the Mina District, kind of a bougie, artsy place, with traditional clay/adobe brickwork transformed into a very modern and fashionable outdoor shopping and eating area. A pretty popular area for native Qataris.

One of the most interesting things about Qatar is that locals are only about 12% of the population, and the rest are mostly foreign workers. The standard of living for Qataris is pretty high, their GDP per capita is the highest of all the Gulf countries, followed closely bye UAE, so with all their all oil and gas reserves they can afford to bring in such a cheap labor force. And their government seems to take care of them very well.

But as a tourist in your day to day routine that mostly involves talking to hotel staff, cleaners, restaurant workers, any type of retail workers, you’re probably not actually going to meet many actual Qataris. Indians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, Filipinos, Nepalese, Egyptians, you name it, you will come into contact with. But as a tourist, I’m not sure if even talked to anyone from Qatar the entire time I was there. Quite the strange dynamic. My first meal was some Turkish? kebabs at a place run a by some Bangladeshi guys. Tasty!

The country also faced some very heavy criticism for how they treated their foreign worker population in the lead up to the World Cup in 2022, where workers were forced to work in blazing hot conditions all day, and many ended up dying of heat stroke or exhaustion. So needless to say the Qatari government isn’t exactly great on human rights abuses and the spending money in the country does come with an ethical dilemma, but being from the US and seeing what’s going on with our government, well people in glass houses can’t throw stones. My general stance is that most governments suck and my money is mostly going to the people of the country, not the government. Plus its only 2 days. But suffice to say that the leverage Qataris can hold over the foreign workers is certainly ripe for exploitation from bad actors.

So walking around you’ll quickly notice that Qatari men usually wear the full length, white garments called the dishdasha, and women usually wear full black dress called an abaya, usually with a head covering as well, called a shayla. Although it doesn’t necessarily mean they’re from Qatar, as they could be from one of the neighboring gulf countries as well. Other foreign male workers generally wear long pants and button downs, as they’d normally wear in their own countries, foreign women usually wear pants and a blouse or a full length dress, and I was quite happy to be sporting shorts and a t-shirt.

As a white guy and obvious tourist I felt no obligation whatsoever to wear pants in the desert. I hate wearing pants. Nobody really cares what you wear around town, as long as it’s not a holy place. Although being a pretty conservative place, western girls will definitely get some looks with short shorts and shoulders exposed. White guys get a pass for everything.

Anyway, the Mina District was a nice walk around, lots of pretty buildings and artisanal shops, definitely a place where you could spend some coin (I didn’t) and you do get some very nice views of the downtown area of Doha, lit up all nicely, right across the bay. I stopped in a more cheap, local kebab place on the walk home, and then couldn’t resist the shisha café I passed, and then after that it was straight to bed, out by 10pm.

the entrance looking back to the downtown

nice coffeeshop on the water, $8 cappucino

So the Mina District was fun for taking some photos, and then walking back there was also a little area on the waterfront that had a bunch of shops and restaurants made from shipping containers, which was kinda neat, as they were constructed very nicely and very colorful. Every area designed for public use in Doha is nice!

notice the security guard in the yellow vest, these guys are everywhere

If you can’t tell, I like the lamps they have around here

So after a solid sleep I was wide awake at 5:30am. I was supposed to sleep longer than this! But I knew there was no going back at this point, so it seemed like a nice opportunity to go for a very early morning jog along the Corniche, the waterfront path that leads all along the bay to the downtown, maybe 5 miles away. Excellent running weather too, upper 50’s or low 60’s.

It was an excellent run, watching the sun come up and watching the buildings slowly get closer and taller. The corniche is gorgeous juxtaposition with the traditional wooden boats (called Dhows) docked near the shore, with the tall modern skycrapers off in the hazy background. I did stop my run many many times to take iphone photos. I kinda wished I took my big camera along, I have a hangup about seeing nice photos in my head but not being able to photograph with my DSLR. Fortunately cell phone camera technology is almost there anyway. But it was really really nice way to start the day. So here’s the photo dump…

As you can tell you, you just can’t have enough dhow photos!

Wide angle lens distortion is a real bitch on phone photos! So that was my early morning on Doha’s Corniche, very nice! I was already glad I made the stopover here.

Danang and Everywhere Nearby

August 14, 2025

So I left Hue on the train to Danang, which was great, the last section of it carving it’s way along the lush hillsides overlooking the coast heading into Danang. I made sure to get a left hand window seat just for these views. Although it was raining the entire time, which was a bit of bummer, and the bright shades or turquoise aquamarine that you’d see in photos looked more like a dark shade of gray. I hadn’t been paying much attention to the weather, but this rain was the start of the summer season’s first tropical depression in Central Vietnam. Yay. I run bad in Danang, when I first flew out to Southeast Asia in December I flew into Danang (great airport btw) and it literally rained the entire week I was there. De ja vu.

Similar views from the train, but this was all I could muster for a photo haha

The reason I like to stop in Danang, besides the beaches, food, coffee, prices, etc, is that it has poker, albeit quasi-legal poker. Cash games (but not tournaments) are illegal in Vietnam, but there are casinos that are allowed to operate as long as they don’t allow any Vietnamese citizens, and some of them have live poker, such as the Crown Casino in Danang. The concept is similar to the “Social Clubs” in Texas for poker. It’s also in USD, which is very convenient. For fully legal poker rooms there are a bunch of card rooms around the city that run tournaments only, and this is where you’ll find all the Vietnamese players. Although I don’t particularly like tournament poker, and the buy ins are small. But still they’re a good way to kill a rainy afternoon, and they’re fun because the tournaments are very soft, lively, and gambley. Plus it’s nice to play with and chat with locals. The type of Vietnamese that play are usually the well educated, upper middle class type, and they really don’t care to throw away a bunch of $30 or $50 buy-ins. That would be FAR less likely in Cambodia.

In Cambodia for the locals, poker just isn’t really a thing. There’s no interest in it, it’s seen kinda like golf, a rich man’s game. And there just aren’t that many people that can afford to lose a few hundred dollars any given night. It’s also technically illegal for Cambodians to gamble in casinos, but it’s not enforced at all. The government likes its’ money after all. So in the poker scene the few Khmers that play are usually either short buying at the lowest stakes, or playing high stakes and don’t care about money at all. Which sums up Cambodian society pretty well. Rich or poor, not much in between.

Danang is a pretty interesting city. It’s been growing very rapidly! It seems to pick up 3% every year, so it’s doubled in size in the last 20 years, up to 1.2 million people. High rises and ones under construction are literally everywhere. It’s long been the cheap beach hotspot for Koreans, with whole sections of the town filled with Kbbqs and karaoke joints. Since Covid it’s been picking up steam as a digital nomad hotspot, with youtubers touting the cheap prices and apartment leases for around $300/month. Although if prices (and crowds) this summer were any indication, Danang’s status of Hidden Gem is officially over! Tourism is up something like 35% from last year. A big part of that has been Vietnam’s push to tap into the Indian market, and holy cow, you can really tell. Vietnam is certainly the hotspot for Indians at the moment.

Vietnam is a quite a bit more developed than a lot of people realize

Hotel prices were at least double what they were in December, so I ended up getting an Airbnb on a nice quiet leafy street that doesn’t have any high rises, which I had already scouted out last time I was here. Being next to the sounds of pounding and jackhammers all day, every day, is a constant worry when selecting a place to stay in Danang. This Airbnb was run by a friendly young Vietnamese woman, although it’s a bit of an awkward set up, as you walk through the living room and kitchen to get to the staircase going up, but she didn’t seem to mind and liked to chat with all her guests. My room had full length glass doors overlooking the street, which was nice. I liked this particular street because there’s very little traffic, there’s lots of trees, but also because I like how it has lots of local shops that operate on the ground floors of the buildings.

In Vietnam it’s very common to turn the ground floor of the place you own into any sort of business of your choosing. There’s no real restrictions or rules against it. So on this street there was a nail salon, laundry, and foot massage shop all run as small businesses. And then for food you’ve got a fresh juice and smoothie place, a coffee/pastry shop, a fruit/yogurt/granola bowl shop, an ice cream place, and a sandwich spot. Most of them are set up as professional looking establishments (albeit with very little seating) but for instance the ice cream and sandwich spots are literally just people’s homes and you basically walk into their living room to place your order and sit at a table on the sidewalk. And that’s if there’s someone even there. If they’re not, you just move along. In a very corporate world, I like this kind of thing. Of course I wouldn’t like it if I really really wanted that chicken bacon sandwich.

So for the first three days it did nothing but rain. Rain rain rain. Enough to flood most of the streets under a few inches of water. In a tourist beach city like Danang, there really isn’t a whole lot to do if the weather is shit. Sit in coffee shops and get massages. Definitely no shortage of either of those type of places. The number of coffee shops in town is actually insane. Take your pick from trendy, modern and minimalist, to old school communist kitsch, or perhaps no decorations at all, just little stools and tables set outside. You could café hop for months and just scratch the surface. Since I was staying in the digital nomad part of town, the nice indoor places were always full of people sitting on their laptops, taking up space. A million coffeeshops, somehow all of them busy. Wild.

After a few days the weather cleared up and it was 80’s and sunny the rest of time. Excellent beach weather. And of course the beaches aren’t crowded during the middle of the day because Asians are absolutely allergic to the sun. You should see what the Vietnamese women wear riding their motos around town to make sure no glint of sunlight touches any piece of bare skin. Oversize sunglasses, hats, full face scarf, pants, long sleeves, gloves, etc. Dressed like it’s winter in 90 degree weather. It isn’t until right around sunset when all the Asians hit he beach. This is when you realize how popular Danang is right now, because the beaches are jammed. Of course with a scooter it’s not that hard to find non-crowded beaches if you like.

Photo stolen from internet, but it’s always crazy to see some of these outfits in 90 degree weather

Midday a few miles away, absolutely nobody on the beaches

Danang in the evening. This was from a stormy day, so it wasn’t too crowded

Besides the beaches, which aren’t anything amazing, Danang has lots of interesting places within scootering distance. Danang has a really pretty peninsula that juts out into the ocean, the Son Tra Peninsula, which is very hilly, forested, and shockingly undeveloped. It’s got a bunch of windy, narrow, pot-holed paved roads you can take your scooter on. What I didn’t know was that they won’t let you take an automatic scooter up there, so I had to turn around. Bummer! I think they’re trying to keep tourists away, because some can’t handle the steep gradients of some of the roads. Meh

My favorite part of Danang is most certainly the Hai Van Pass (cover photo), it’s also one of the top touristy things to do. It’s a 15 mile road that takes a similar route the train took, winding up in mountains overlooking the coast. Sometimes you’ll read that it’s dangerous for tourists to do, but that’s only if you don’t know how to ride at all, because the roads are wide and in fantastic shape. Excellent riding! At the other end of the pass the Lap An Lagoon, which is really nice. I think an underrated part of Vietnam is their lagoons. They’re interesting eco-systems, the brackish water is good for raising things like mussels, crabs, lobsters, and especially oysters. The fishing villages and the amount of fishing traps, stilted huts, boats, etc all in the lagoons is particularly photogenic. And eating a plate full of freshly caught oysters for like $4 is also great.

I prefer oysters with less stuff on them, but these were good too

The most popular spot around is definitely Hoi An, about 30 minutes south, which is a kind of bougie ancient town, filled with boutique shops and cafes and famous for it’s brightly lit paper lanterns everywhere as well as boat trips down the river. I liked eating in the big indoor market, which is full of small vendors with rectangular bar type seating all vying to get you to their stand. Hoi An’s specialty is called Cao Lau, a pork noodle soup dish with distinctive chewy noodles. Very tasty.

As for the main streets of Hoi An, it is an absolute zoo. Tourism has basically exploded there. Although June is peak domestic travel time for the Vietnamese and it’s also peak Indian holiday travel as well, so yeah, it’s a busy month. It’s still worth checking out, and who doesn’t love a bunch of cutesy cafes, restaurants and cocktail bars in old French buildings with old timey paper lanterns illuminating everything? Women especially seem to dig it. But really there’s no room to even walk on the main street and I had to chuckle at just how many boats were in the river, all jammed in there like sardines. No thanks. A few hours in Hoi An was enough for me.

Everyone trying to get you on their boat

There’s also the Marble Mountain, which has a bunch of Buddhist temples built into the karst mountain grottos. There’s some sort of resort amusement park called Bana Hills, which sounds miserable and I would not be attending. The only reason to go would be to get that famous photo of the hand bridge (photo stolen to the right), but really I don’t care that much. Besides that there’s just lots of nice rural scenery, rice fields and the like which makes for a great day cruising around on a moto. You can basically pick any direction and it’s nice for riding. So anyway, there’s lots of reasons to like Danang!

So I spent a few straight days picking a new place to drive around in the day and then playing poker at night. Unfortunately the cash games were pretty dead and it was mostly the house players keeping the games going. I really wish Danang had better poker, because it really is a great spot to hang out for a while if you like beach life and doing outdoor activities and meeting other nomads. It definitely reminded me of Playa del Carmen. The city center itself being kinda boring for tourists, kinda ugly, sprawling, lacking culture as so many people are transplants etc, but as an active foreigner there is just a lot of stuff going on. You can easily join yoga groups, running clubs, do beach volleyball, surfing, Crossfit, trivia nights etc. Less focus on a drinking and partying.

Which is kind of the opposite of Phnom Penh, where the crowd leans more boozy and degenerate. I mean I like Phnom Penh and all, its cushy, some excellent cafes, restaurants and bars, but there is not much of a health and wellness scene. There’s basically zero nature, very few outdoor activities, almost no parks, the idea of a running trail in a forest would be a completely alien concept. My outdoorsy activity is going for runs that mostly involve dodging moving cars, trucks and scooters and broken pieces of sidewalk or pavement. Even getting out and doing day trips there’s very little of interest, mostly just endless sprawl followed by flat scrubby land. Although it’s hard to be too harsh on Cambodia, as so much of it shaped by uhh, something very bad that happened not long ago. But for better or worse, Cambodia needs foreign money and is happy to allow plenty of gambling and easy visas, and I can’t complain about that. Anyway, I’ll finish with way too many photos of that lagoon that I liked so much :)

fishing is obviously the livelihood around here

Hue, the former Capital

August 9, 2025

Hue is a pleasant medium sized city of over a million in Central Vietnam, just a bit smaller than Danang, but quite a bit less touristy. It’s the former capital of Vietnam, from 1802 to 1945 during the Nguyen dynasty. It was also a major battleground of the Tet Offensive in the Vietnam War, which was lost to the Vietcong with many civilians being massacred. It’s well located on the Perfume River, which is supposedly named because it carries lots of aromatic plants and flowers during autumn, although I have trouble imaging this, as boat exhaust seems to the primary smell near the river. Doing a dragonboat ride at sunset down the river is a very popular thing to do.

Hue is famous for it’s walled Imperial City, which was taken after Beijing’s Forbidden City. But it’s also got a bunch of historical cites, a citadel, a few massive mausoleums of the former rulers, and even an abandoned waterpark. It’s also got some nice countryside and it’s only 30 minutes away from the ocean. I stayed just two nights, but definitely could have done three. I’m not going to write too much for this post though, just provide the photos with some comments. Like usual, I just rented a moto and spent the day cruising around. The first stops are the mausoleums, the big 3, built by emperors Tu Duc, Minh Mang, and Khai Din. Sadly I did not dress in traditional Vietnamese clothes for these places haha.

Fun Fact: Tu Duc was the longest running emperor of the Nguyen Dynasty. He had 104 wives! And that’s not including concubines

Can you tell that dressing up for these places and taking photos is a popular thing to do?!

Minh Mang’s Mausoleum, 2nd emperor. He liked to build stuff and kill people.

Khai Dinh’s Mausoleum. 12th Emperor. His predecessor was exiled by the French in the 1900’s and he was mostly seen a French puppet.

Just enough time to hit the beach in the late afternoon

The crossing the bridge over the Tam Giang Lagoon, largest lagoon in Southeast Asia

For whatever reason, there are cemeteries everywhere around here

Entering Hue’s Imperial City. This was the main residence later on in the dynasty.

So that was a pretty active day and a half in Hue. There’s a lot to see. The Imperial City definitely piques your interest from the outside as the outer walls are tall enough that you can’t see anything inside. There’s four main gates, all crossing the surrounding moat. Two of the gates are closed, one is for the tourist entrance and one for the tourist exit, which is a little confusing if you don’t know the layout beforehand. I got there right when it opened so it was pretty cool to have the place mostly to myself, well besides like 3 different girls in costume and their photographers haha. Dressing up at these old historical sites is basically a national pastime as far as I can tell!

The grounds of the city are pretty expansive, you could easily wander around for a few hours, but it started drizzling when I was there, so I didn’t stay too long. I needed one of those antique umbrellas all the girls were carrying around. Of course I parked at the gate on the exact opposite of exit gate, which mean walking an extra mile around the walls in the rain to get to my scooter, grrr. I stopped in the usual egg + baguette type of breakfast place, eventually returned the scooter, and was on the 1pm train to Danang. It’s so nice to have the train option again!

Savannakhet and into Vietnam

July 21, 2025

After Thakhek I was ready to head into Vietnam, but the border-crossing buses don’t go from Thakhek, you have to backtrack south a few hours to the 2nd largest city in Laos, Savannakhet. After doing some research I found someone who recommended a good one day motorbike loop from Savannakhet, so that was all the convincing I needed to stay two nights in the town. It was a 3 hour minibus trip, with somehow only two people in our bus, plus a mango pit stop at a roadside market that also sold live snakes in a bag, bbq rodents, and dead animals in large glass jars filled with liquid (pictured). Yummy. The mangos were actually really good though, they like them partially unripe, so they’re a little soft in the middle and crunchy at the edges. The driver gave me a mango and his knife to cut my own on the way. Top notch service!

But seriously what is that thing in the photo?!

Once in town the driver said I could pay an extra $2 to get dropped off directly at my guesthouse instead of the bus station, so sure. I checked into a family run guesthouse and the teenage son showed me to the room, and soon enough I wandered off. All of these Loatian cities kind of have a similar feel, they’re all on the Mekong, they all have some colonial French buildings, they’re all kind of boring, and they all have a night market which is always the most popular place to visit in the evenings. Being the largest of the southern cities, Savannakhet had the most old French buildings and the biggest and most diverse night market, which I suppose makes it the best of these cities! They had a few interesting things like Turkish style kebabs and grilled eggplant, Japanese mochi, and Korean fried chicken and corn dogs. It’s worth noting with the explosion of Kpop in the last few years, everything Korean is very trendy now. American culture is on the decline. And I hate to say it, but Korean corn dogs >>> American corn dogs. The fried chicken is closer. I still have to go with Nashville hot chicken.

I rented a bike from my guesthouse, and they gave me a beater. But seeing how Savannakhet gets very few tourists, there’s not many places to rent bikes, so I figured I would make do. The loop was all paved road anyway. So I set off around 11am, 15 minutes later I’m in the countryside. But this damn bike is running high RPMS at cruising speed. I was shocked at how fast it was using up gas and had to stop at a roadside stall to buy a liter of gasoline. When I tried to start the bike up again, nothing. Agghgh. Tried for 5 minutes, using the kickstart, nothing. Someone came over to help to see if they could get it going, nope. I asked where the mechanic was and fortunately there was one a few minutes down the road. The nice thing about Southeast Asia is that if you’re anywhere near civilization, no matter how small the village, there is always a mechanic nearby. Always.

It was about 10 minutes, sweating my ass off in the sun, and I actually passed a guy who asked me what was up, in unmistakably American English, and he walked with me to the mechanic to help translate. This guy had lived and worked most of his life in California but came back to Laos to retire and build a house in the countryside. Not a bad plan. After failing to get the bike to start again, the mechanic unscrewed the middle plastic housing and began looking around inside. Verdict: Bad air filter and bad spark plug. He brushed the air filter and replaced the spark plug and 15 minutes later I was on my way after paying the invoice, $2. Crazy. Although the bike seemed to be running even rougher than before. But I just started and hell if I’m going to just turn around already.

In this part of Laos the land is very flat and the scenery uninspiring, and there’s nothing overly exciting for tourists to see, but there were a few mildly interesting spots on this loop. My first stop was at a shady forest temple called Wat Phoukor, which was a nice respite from the sun, as most of the countryside doesn’t have many big trees. The temple grounds have many scenes from local folklore, including figurines depicting what happens in Buddhist hell. I didn’t even know there was Buddhist hell! Pretty gruesome!

Going for a relaxing stroll around the temple… oh wait. Yikes

Riding further on, there’s a monkey forest, but all the monkeys seem to just hang out in the parking lot, not in the actual forest. And trail disappears. Hmm. There’s also spot called Taleo old temple, which was designed like a church, but isn’t a church, and was in use as a monastic school until 1969 when it got heavily damaged by American bombing campaigns. It’s still standing today, but in bad shape. The closer you look in Laos, the more you see the scars from the Vietnam war. Apparently the locals know where to find old, unexploded cluster bombs, but people are more educated about them now (ie teaching kids not to play with them) and knowing specific areas to avoid. But still a handful of people die every year from explosions, usually children. Of the 270 million cluster bombs dropped on Laos, they say 30% never exploded. That’s a pretty insane number, almost 100 MILLION little bombs just sitting around somewhere in the country.

While I was driving I noticed my gas gauge drop pretty quickly, but I thought there was no friggen way I could have burned through almost a whole tank in an hour. No way. Normally a full tank lasts you all day. I was on a country road, so I’d investigate in the next village. A minute later the needle dropped all the way down and I came sputtering to halt. God damn it. Piece of shit bike. Back to walking it on the side of the road. Very fortunately (again!) a place with gas was only a few minutes away to fill her up and it was only a short delay that could have easily been much worse. Back on the road I was soon at the highlight of the loop, the oldest library in Laos, built on wooden stilts over the river. Very impressive! No tourists around or anything, just a few monks hanging out and some local kids running around.

There was also a turtle pond and crocodile marsh to see, but you had to go a bit out of the way to get there, and with my lack of trust in my bike, I decided against it. Which was good, because the bike was getting worse, and as soon as I made it within the city limits of Savannakhet, the piece of crap died again! Now I’m pretty pissed off. 3rd time the bike has died. Although once again, it was just a few blocks walk to find another mechanic. Same deal, he opened it up, took a look, bad spark plug. He removed it and handed it to me to touch, burning hot! Ow! Thanks for that Mr. Mechanic! So another new spark plug. Another big bill from the auto shop. A bit more expensive this time, $2.25. Big city prices.

I finally got back to the guesthouse well after dark and let them know what I thought of this bike they gave me. Karen mode. I was pretty (very) annoyed they gave me such a shit bike, and I was very very lucky it died in all the right spots. I didn’t have to pay for the bike rental, but I still ended up paying more in gas and mechanics than I would have paid on a normal day of renting a bike + buying a full tank on a bike that isn’t garbage. Although the actual dollar amounts are trivial of course. I guess it’s pretty fitting though, you can’t have a trip to Laos with at least some bike trouble! Well that concludes the brief two week excursion into South/Central Laos. Being that I’m poor-ish this year, I didn’t want to travel too long, my plan was to get over to Danang in Vietnam to play some more poker. Although the bus from Savannahket goes to a city two hours north of Danang called Hue, the former capital of Vietnam. So that’s where I’d go first. Two more nights before the poker restarts.

This was maybe $2.50? Good stuff. Laos steak and eggs.

The next morning I went to a beef and egg place near the bus station before boarding a big ol’ bus from the 70’s or 80’s. I was the only foreigner on the bus. The border crossing was actually surprisingly stressful because the driver doesn’t speak English and nobody tells you anything! There’s a no man’s land that you have to walk across, and then once you get through the Vietnam side, there’s no bus anywhere to be seen. Uhhh. What. I’m trying to ask people and they just point to the exit gate. Okaaayyyy, weird. You almost always wait for your bus in the immigration area.

Lots of old things in Laos. This is from the bus station parking lot

So I walk past the exit gate and guard, and now I’m fully in Vietnam. All the locals waiting on the Vietnam side are trying to get me in a taxi or minvan to the nearest town, Dong Hoi. No, no, no. Thankfully someone actually helpful tells me to go down the road and wait at the gas station for my bus. I ended up waiting there 30 minutes, wondering if my bus and luggage were gone, never to be seen again. But eventually it arrived and it was smooth sailing until Hue. Although we sat in rush our traffic, driving through the whole city, and they wouldn’t let you off the bus in town! You had to wait until the bus station, outside of town on the exact opposite side of the city. And then sit in traffic again taking a taxi back into main part of the city. AGHHGHG. But now we’re in Hue!

Thakhek Loop Pt. 2

July 12, 2025

A lot of backpackers rush through the loop and only spend one night in Kong Lor just to do the cave, but I was definitely glad I stayed for two nights, and could have stayed longer. It really has that idyllic Laos countryside scenery. And being right on the river at the resort was great. It’s the same river that goes through the Kong Lor cave, so you can actually hire a boat from the resort to go straight to the cave if you want. Although it’s expensive with no one to split costs with. And I had my bike, so that was no go. Here’s some of the views from the river and the countryside nearby…

the spring water is very cold, creating the mist

The next morning it was off to the famous Kong Lor Cave. I begrudgingly paid almost double the normal price as solo person, road my scooter to the river parking area, got assigned my boat driver, off we went to our little wooden longtail boat. Only one group ahead of us. In dry season apparently you’re able to pay extra to have them precariously strap your bike to the boat and take it all the way through the cave, where you can keep riding on the other side. Although in rainy season they don’t let you do it because the roads on the other side are muddy and bad drivers (most drivers on the loop) can get themselves stuck or injured. Also this year one of the boats doing this capsized and the boatman died because he didn’t know how to swim (and wasn’t wearing a life vest). So it’s ethically dubious, but it’s kind of the wild wild west out here.

The longtail boat parking at the mouth of the cave

We’re off to a bad start on my boat. We approach a bunch of longtail boats parked at the mouth of the cave, and his is the one that is completely flooded with water. WTF. How does that even happen? So I sit there watching him throw buckets and buckets of water out of the boat before we can begin. The floor, where I want to put my backpack is still under an inch of water. Great. So we set off into the all encompassing darkness, my torch and his torch are the only sources of light we have. It’s a pretty trippy experience taking a boat through a pitch black cave with just two headlamps. Along the way there’s some small rocks and rapids to dodge, marked with little colorful buoys.

At one point you can see some lights in the distance, the largest chamber of the cave is illuminated, which is one of two stops where you stop and get out of the boat. Pretty impressive! But the real novelty is the ecosystem that it’s located in, attached to this underground river system. We made our other stop a few minutes up the river, nothing extraordinary as far as caves go, and then it was back on the boat for some relaxing river cave cruising to get to the exit.

Then THWACK! And crunching noises. We’re almost throw from the boat! We hit something. And the boat lurched off to the side. We’re sitting on something, a rock, kinda sideways. It took a second to figure out what happened. The boat is partially out of the water, tilted dangerously at 45 degree angle, resting on a submerged rock. WTF. So much for a relaxing river cruise. After the initial shock, my first reaction is relief, because we were soooo close to flipping, and if we did, there goes my phone, passport, camera, lenses, laptop. Everything. And who knows if this guy knows how to swim. Yikes

If you want to visualize it, here’s my best attempt. Our boat is stuck on a submerged two pronged rock (red dots) with one prong right below the surface and the other prong a bit deeper. This is not our cave of course, as ours doesn’t have any lights. It’s pitch black except for where we shine our headlamps.

Ok, so the boat is stable, we’re just stuck in the middle of the river in a pitch black cave with no one around. Could be worse! The boatman is very animated now, yelling and presumably swearing and saying all sorts of stuff I can’t understand. This isn’t just your average Tuesday I guess. He’s able to get out and stand on part of the rock that is only a few inches below the surface, and he we wants me to join him there. Ok, chill out buddy. I take all the stuff out of my pockets, take my camera, and stash it into my backpack. There’s not enough room for both of us on this little rocky perch. And this isn’t a smooth river stone, it’s sharp jaggedy limestone. It can easily cut your feet. The bottom of the boat is probably torn up pretty good from it.

I’m trying to stand there with him, but there’s no room and it’s painful. I point that I’m going in the water, which he is emphatically shaking his head no, but there’s literally nowhere for me to go. It’s fine, I can swim. I hop in, and tread water and shine my headlamp on the boat. He relaxes a bit. He is definitely more stressed out than I am, seeing how it’s his lack of attention that got his boat stuck on a rock and his client swimming, and his job is possibly on the line. Not a great look for the guy who drives boats for a living. You’d think these guys would know this river like the back of their hand, they drive it every day. Guess not. Anyway…

He starts shaking the boat as hard as he can. It’s not moving. I try and lift as well, but I’m pretty useless being in the water. He’s yelling and grunting, but it’s really wedged in there good. These wooden boats are heavy! And this limestone is very grippy. We’re getting nowhere. He starts making whistles for help, but c’mon bro, that’s not doing anything. So we end up just having to sit there and wait for someone to come by. I swim a bit and find a shallow sandy spot to stand. But I’m really not worried at all. I’m actually feeling kinda giddy, because if we had capsized, we would have been fucked. Really fucked. The boat driver more than me presumably. Forget the electronics, if we were in the water with both our lights out, complete darkness, that’s nightmare material. And if the boat driver doesn’t know how to swim, does he drown? Do I try to help him? Can I even do anything if I can’t see anything? Wild to think about. But now, the boat is intact, nobody is hurt, everything is fine!! This is the biggest tourist attraction in central Laos, who knows when the next boat is coming, but there’s going to be boats coming!

Maybe 10 minutes later we see the lights from a boat coming up the river the opposite way we came – which is odd because we were one of the first morning boats to depart. But yay! It’s a boat with 4 guys in some sort of khaki uniforms, maybe government workers of some kind. This is basically the best case scenario, a boat full of strapping young lads! They pulled up next to us and were able to rock and lift our boat enough to get it freed from it’s rocky holding cell. Mission accomplished! We thanked them and the one guy who spoke English said “Don’t worry, no problem” before they sped off into the darkness.

Time to fire up the motor and get moving! Revvv, revvvv, click. Click. Ughghhgh. Nothing. God damn it. More swear words from the captain. He’s whacking the motor like that crazy Russian cosmonaut with the crowbar at the end of Armageddon, “This is how we fix things in Russian Space Station!!” Except it didn’t magically work, he gave up and defeatedly took out his big wooden paddle and we drifted over to the nearby sandbar to park. He got out his toolkit and started working on the engine, clanging away, doing who knows what. It’s gonna be a really long day if we have to paddle out! At this point I’m really getting a good feel for what these cave walls look like in this section of Kong Lor.

After 10-15 minutes of engine stuff, revvvv, revvvvv, bbrrRRRRRR!! We’re back! Out to the other side, into the glowing daylight and eventually the village to have a little rest and dry off in the sun. The village is mostly stands to sell stuff to tourists, but whatever. My iced coffee tasted great. It’s really pretty on this side, I can see why people want to take their bikes through the cave and keep going in this direction. After 30 minutes break time was over and it was a rather uneventful ride back through the cave to the entrance. I thought about mentioning this mishap to the office, but decided against it, even if he was a shitty boatman, I didn’t really want to try and get him fired. So we parted ways like nothing had happened. No tip though. Definitely no tip for THAT. I did send the office an email a day later about the submerged rock, although I’m guessing the odds of that doing anything were approaching zero.

From here I had the option to take it slow, and spend a night somewhere else on the loop before driving back to Thakhek the next day, or just spend the rest of the day going straight there. I felt like I had enough excitement for the trip, so back to Thakhek it was. 60km in the countryside, and then the last 100km of the trip were all on the highway – the new, and not-potholed highway, which is a real treat when you’re in Laos, but not exactly very exciting to write about or to take photos. So that was about all for the Thakhek loop. I was back in my hotel bed by late afternoon. With time to spare to go find some sunset photos, yay. So overall, a pretty successful trip! No injuries, no illness, no bike damage, no extra incurred expenses, just one 45 minute river delay. And here’s some photos of my last evening in Thakhek, err just outside of Thakhek.

Got the sunset this time! But those powerlines, grrr!

Thakhek Loop Pt. 1

July 12, 2025

Onto the 4th largest city in Laos (90,000 people), the city of Thakhek. After getting dropped off in the town center, I walked into the first hotel I saw, $22 for a room with a balcony, perfect. $1 cheaper than booking online too, oh yeah. But there was no time to waste lounging in the room, it was getting late in the afternoon and I wanted some sunset photos among the karst formations nearby. I picked up a scooter rental down the street and I was outta town.

Now this is where we’re starting to get into that quintessential Laos scenery! A few minutes later you could see the karsts in the distance, those big green humps that look like they could be part of a Mario world. It’s basically guaranteed to be a lovely ride among the karsts. Although I did get kinda skunked finding a good sunset photo. Sometimes you can never find just the right spot, the right angle with the sun, a clear view, an interesting foreground, etc. Alas.

Couldn’t get a sunset shot. But still very nice

As for Thakhek, I liked it more than Pakse, it’s smaller, quainter, the downtown is right on the river, there’s a proper night market, with live music even! I met a British girl in the hotel lobby to eat with, who just finished the loop so she gave me the rundown on the highlights and good places to stop. There’s lots of caves to choose from, too many actually, and not all that much information online. I learned many of the caves are flooded out during rainy season, and that some aren’t even marked on google maps! What? In 2025?! Crazy.

So the next day I was off on the bike, cloudy in the morning like usual. The first part of the loop is some of the best scenery on the whole trip, driving through the karsts. Although there is a lot of truck traffic going to/from Vietnam, with a lot of big potholes, so the actual riding can be a bit unpleasant at times. The big trucks have no regard for bikes, you’d better get to the shoulder of the road! And then you go through a potholed section and pass them up, only for them to come roaring back on your ass again.

I stopped in two different caves, although one was flooded and you couldn’t get anywhere close to the mouth of it. The other was very commercialized, with garish colored lighting. You could take a boat up the river through it for a bit, which I was going to do, but they wanted double the posted price because I was one person. Oh fuck off. Of course I regretted this a few moments later. It’s an extra $7.50 lol. But I was in the mood to be on the open road, there would be many more caves.

The next hour was more pretty landscapes and small villages before turning north and getting off the road with all the trucks. From here the land flattened out a bit, the sun came out, the road was good, no traffic, just easy riding. It was hot though! I stopped at a small waterfall to cool off, which is a swimming hole in dry season, but the water level and current were too high in rainy season for swimming. Hmmph.

A few hours and brief stops later I was at Saibadee guesthouse, where almost everyone stays on this relatively desolate part of the loop. I’ve gotta give props to whoever built this place, I’m guessing they predicted the rise in popularity of the Thakhek loop pretty well, and then monopolized it in this section. It’s got single rooms, dorms, camping, a huge outdoor common area, bbq area, bag toss, volleyball etc. Every day they do a massive all you can eat BBQ that everybody goes to. So it’s a good spot to hang out and meet other people on the loop, and it’s guauranteed you will run into some of these people again further on the loop. It’s a very young crowd however, like most of southeast asia.

These weird lakes with dead trees are from the excess water from the big dam/hydro-electric project in the region

The next day was more caves, a scenic swimming hole to take a break in the early afternoon, and then finishing in the village of Kong Lor. The Kong Lor Cave is the main attraction on the loop, a massive cave with a river running through it for 7km. But first I’d take one day to explore the sights around Kong Lor. I stayed in a new resort along the river. They have gorgeous river view rooms for $80/night, but they also have these smalled raised bungalows connected by cute wooden walkways for only $15/night with an online deal. I’ll take one of those please, haha. The property was really well done, with a restaurant, lounge area, firepit, and river access with kayaks. Although this was not the place for socializing, being low season, and weekday, there was basically nobody there (just one French couple) as it’s not a backpackery type place. Whatever, I’ll take the whole place to myself!

The next day I scootered down the road for 10km to another cave. You pay $2, they give you a headlamp, and you’re on your own. In dry season you can apparently go over 20kms into this cave! That’s such a cool thing about Laos. A massive cave system, and it’s almost completely untouched, hardly any tourists, and you just go. Just don’t hurt yourself and expect any help! Although being wet season, I quickly learned you could not be exploring very far into this cave without swimming.

But you know what, why not go cave swimming? I ditched all my stuff and went off with just my swimsuit and headlamp. It’s not like it was all swimming, some parts were dry sand, sometimes it was knee deep water, and only some parts you actually had to paddle. This was quite exhilarating. Swimming solo into the deep darkness of a huge cave with only a torch gets your heart beating a bit! Although for most of the time I could see the small speck of light behind me from the mouth of the cave. Once I lost that and it was completely dark on all sides it got pretty creepy. Not like fun creepy, but scary creepy. And I’m not a total idiot, if something happened to my torch or it fell in the water it would be really bad, so I didn’t go too much further after I couldn’t see the entrance. But that was really fun! And it really is pretty wild that you can even do something like that as a random tourist. Laos is great.

That afternoon it was back to the resort to enjoy some overpriced smoothies overlooking the river and take their kayak out for a bit. There’s a natural spring that empties into the main river that you can paddle up to for a mile or two. Great. It made me wonder what other kayak spots are out there in Laos, undiscovered. Same with rock climbing spots. When I got back to the resort, it looked like I wouldn’t have it to myself tonight. Chinese tour group! Aghghh. The last thing you want to see if you’re hoping for chill vibes, peace and quiet – or any food left at the breakfast buffet. They were fine actually, I just made sure to time my dinner at a separate time from them.

Bolaven Plateau Mini Loop

July 10, 2025

So as I mentioned earlier, I already did the full 5 day, 350 km loop over a decade ago, but this time it’ll be only a two day, one night mini loop, a different route which is the more popular one these days. 200km in total, so nothing too crazy. It was raining in the morning, so I waited a bit to head off. Most of first day isn’t particularly exciting, the hotspots are some coffee farms to stop by and have a fresh local brew, and perhaps do a coffee tour if you’re so inclined. I’ve been on enough of those. My way of keeping things interesting was taking a detour off the main highway on the side roads. Doing this in Vietnam for example, was most likely to be worth it because the side roads are usually good and paved. Laos, not so much!

Not much to take photos of. Here’s a house

This part of the Laos countryside was pretty unexciting, dirt roads, lots of rocks, lots of potholes, very slow going! Which is fine, I don’t mind a bit of a slow bumpy ride, as long as there’s something to see. But honestly there wasn’t much of anything to look at, mostly flat scrubby land, some dirt fields, a few houses here and there. And then the drizzling started, making that top layer of dirt a claylike mud. Which was okay at first, and got progressively worse as the drizzle kept up.

Still okay, but getting worse. This is where I put my camera away

These red dirt roads feel a little different than just riding through normal dirt/mud, where the whole ground is permeated with water. It’s like a firm hardpack where the underlying earth doesn’t absorb the water, leaving the slick mud mixture to form a layer sitting on top. Kind of like how driving on an all gravel road feels pretty stable, but if it’s a layer of gravel sitting on top of asphalt, it’s much more slippery and dangerous. But I had made it just fine, very cautiously, almost slipping out a few times, but not. I thought I was in the clear, just two miles from the highway, when the road got really really bad, basically just one huge mudslick.

It’s exhausting riding! You need super precise throttle control to keep your momentum going, but just barely, not too fast. And you have to have a 100% straight line, because if you turn the wheel at all you’re sliding out. And even then you might still slide out. It’s easy to drop the bike, because your feet have no traction when you put them down to stabilize yourself. I’m not exactly a mud riding pro though, so I’m sure the locals would make this look a lot easier. Many of them also have dirtbikes. Although I did watch some big trucks come by, and even these huge heavy trucks could not properly grip this road. I mean they were moving forward, but you could see them slip sliding, side to side, kinda like a tailfin. Yikes. At some spots I got a bit stuck and tried to walk the bike, but you literally couldn’t move because you can’t get any traction with normal gym shoes. Zero. It’s like ice. If the incline was more than 2% you’d just slide right back down. No choice but to get back on the bike and grind it out.

Eventually I did make it back to the highway, relieved, exhausted, but hey I made it and didn’t drop the bike at all. Of course my shoes, socks, legs were covered in mud, plus random splatters everywhere else. So that detour was definitely in the ‘not worth it’ department. Oh well. Even though it was still drizzling, it was like a dream being back on the pavement. Soon enough the rain stopped and I made it to the first major stop of the tour, the Tad Lo waterfall. Pretty impressive during rainy season! A lot of people like to spend the night here to enjoy the small village and the falls, but my way to enjoy the falls is by swimming in them, and with the weather being cool, misty, and cloudy, I decided to just stop for lunch and then keep moving on.

I ended up further down the road in a bigger village that has a few spots for foreigners to sleep at. I somewhat randomly chose a homestay, which had maybe 4 very basic rooms. There were two couples staying there, a French/Brazilian couple, and a French couple. Seriously like 80% of white tourists in Laos are French. They seem to have an affinity for former French colonies. Although most of them seem disappointed that none of the locals can speak any French and they have to use English haha.

It was run by a pretty interesting guy, a former farmer (basically everyone in the village is a farmer) and recently converted Christian (almost half the village is Christian now) who not only owns this homestay, but a farm as well, so he was certainly reasonably well-off compared to most villagers. But his hosting graces were not exactly polished because he kept bitching about how much he spent building the rooms and the western toilet/bathroom and leveling out the road, and how Covid screwed him, and he wasn’t getting enough tourists to recover the building costs. And how lucky us tourists were that we could just drive around wherever we liked, spending cheap Laos currency. Which is true of course, and it is nice! But having your host basically bitching at you right from the start, while you just kind of sit there and nod your head, isn’t exactly the type of hospitality most tourists are hoping for! The coffee was good though.

Fancy pants family with a tractor AND a truck

From the homestay we stopped by his brother’s place next door where he was cooking, cow brain among other things. Not bad. Soft tofu-like texture. Very spicy! Then he took me on a 30 minute walk around the village, which was pretty fun, because it was mostly him pointing at houses, and saying either good things or bad things about the families that lived there, if they were lazy or hard workers, and pointing out if they used shoddy building materials or not, or if they could afford a truck or tractor. Apparently the popular thing in the last few years is people using these big tobacco bongs, and getting hooked on them, bringing them out to field to work, making people lazy etc. Nobody wants to work anymore! Well except the good Christian families.

For religion, most of the village still had their traditional animist beliefs, and many of the local traditions and celebrations sounded quite fascinating dealing with all the ghosts and spirits to keep happy, or to keep away. But he was saying the problem was that if anything good happens to someone, it’s because they’ve been blessed by the spirits, but if something bad happens to someone, it’s because they’ve been cursed by them. So it doesn’t have to do with hard work or personal responsibility. And then if you have issues you don’t work on it yourself, you go to the local Shaman who figures out a course of action to drive away these bad spirits or bring the good spirits back to fix your problem or bad luck or whatever.

Of course the action often involves some sort of animal sacrifice, chickens for small problems, pigs for bigger problems, water buffalo for the biggest problems. If you have developed a serious health condition, do you go to the hospital an hour away? Nope! Sacrifice a water buffalo! The water buffalos cost about $1,000, which is around half (or more) of a farmers yearly salary. So people end up spending all their money on these silly Shamans who don’t actually do anything. He said he knew a guy who was a heavy drinker that had stomach swelling, feet swelling, couldn’t walk etc (presumably cirrhosis) and spent his whole life savings sacrificing buffalo (and not stopping drinking) and obviously it didn’t fix anything and now he has to beg for painkillers. So yeah, I could see how this traditional belief system could be a real problem. Growing up around modern medicine, you can take it for granted, I learned this especially in Africa, but witch doctors are still alive and well in many parts of the developing world!

The weather cleared up in the late afternoon and I took the scooter out to explore my surroundings for sunset. It was a good one! So far in rainy season it seems like most days the sun just sets quietly behind a layer of clouds at the horizon. But tonight it was finally clear on the horizon and there were some nice pinks and purples in the sky afterwards.

I got back for the big group dinner, some good home-cooking, with most things involving two of Laos’s favorite ingredients, chili peppers and basil, accompanied by sticky rice of course. So that was nice. And we got the whole run down of why the animists are all dum-dums and everyone needs to start believing in the Lord Our Savior!

This wasn’t our dinner, but this was the brother cooking a cow brain dish (somewhat of a delicacy). Tasted alright!

The next morning we had a nice pancake, bananas, and nutella breakfast and I was off on my way. I did another little detour loop to get some views from higher up, with paved roads and all, which was worth it this time! Nice winding roads with the fog rising up from the valley floor, and then snaking back down to the highway. On the way towards Pakse there are a bunch of waterfalls to check out, although the fog eventually turned into another midday drizzle, which was a bit of a bummer. I waited it out in various coffee plantation cafes along the way. Here’s some photos of the most popular waterfalls, they’re quite similar, both being dual falls. I remembered them now from 14 years ago, and the weather was the exact same, cloudy and misty!

Later on the afternoon the clouds cleared eventually and I did finally get my chance to have a somewhat sunny, swim-able waterfall. It was in a pretty weird location, at an abandoned resort hotel. I wouldn’t have known to go around the locked front gates if I didn’t read it online. This waterfall only had a handful of google reviews. Some old man materializes out of nowhere to collect 50 cents to park your bike and points out the concrete walkway to get down to the water. I almost had the place to myself, just one instagram couple there doing their quick little photoshoot and leaving. This is what is so cool about southern Laos, you’ve got this objectively stunning waterfall, and it’s mostly untouched by people! It was the weekend too! I liked this one much more than the two previously posted waterfalls where all the tourists stop. This was a good way to finish up the mini loop and start heading back to Pakse. Tomorrow morning would be off to Thakhek to do the increasingly popular Thakhek loop!

For how few tourists come here, it’s a pretty damn impressive waterfall!

Big Buddha overlooking Pakse and the Mekong

Into Laos: Pakse and Vat Phou

July 8, 2025

Next stop: Sleepy little Laos. From Kratie it’s about 3 hours to the border, (visa on arrival) and then another three to Pakse, the 3rd largest city in Laos - clocking in at only 115,000 people! The south is the more densely populated part of Laos, compared the more mountainous north. For how big the country is, it’s almost hard to fathom how few people live in Laos. The whole country is only 7 million people! That’s way less than the Chicago metropolitan area. Meanwhile next door, Vietnam has over 100 million people. It really is pretty wild to think about, just how underpopulated and isolated the country is.

Nobody goes to Pakse to see Pakse, and like almost all “big cities” in Laos there’s very little of interest for a tourist to do. There’s maybe a few old french building to look at, a pagoda, you can wander around the local market, there’s a small night market that’s better for snacking than eating a real meal. You can roll the dice getting a massage, but there’s at least a 50/50 chance it’s going to be a very weak, untrained, body rub. I don’t think I took a single photo in the actual city, heh. That’s how you know that I think it’s a boring place!

A pretty crucial bridge, built by the Japanese in 2000

Laos temples are a bit more ornate than Cambodian ones

The best thing to do in Pakse is get out of Pakse! Even just across the river there’s a mountain with a pagoda at the top that offers sweeping views of the whole city, which is quite nice at sunset. Driving around on a scooter it doesn’t take long before you’re in the countryside, which is by far my favorite part of Laos. The roads might suck, but rural Laos scenery is always rustic, quaint, and gorgeous. Here’s what you get driving 20 minutes outside of town…

My first full day in Laos I wanted to check out the Khmer temple (and unesco heritage site) Vat Phou, which is about an hour south of Pakse. It was built (well built up much further) at the height of the Khmer empire in the 11th century, when the Khmer kingdom covered most of southern Laos, eastern Thailand and southern Vietnam. It was originally built with the Hindu vision of the relationship between the gods and humanity, with Shiva being the primary god being worshipped. Hinduism had a massive influence in Cambodian culture, with Angkor Wat itself being dedicated to Vishnu. But over the course of many centuries the Hindu gods were slowly phased out by Buddhism. Eventually Buddhism became the state religion in Cambodia in the 13th century with Laos following suit.

By the 1300’s the Khmer Empire was in a state of decline, while Laos and it’s leader Fa Ngum rose to power and recovered the lands in the south (including Vat Phou) and established the Lan Xang empire, which would last until 1707. The end of the Angkor Kingdom is listed officially as 1431 with the fall of Angkor Thom to the Ayutthaya Kingdom of Thailand. The Ayutthaya would eventually sack the Cambodia capital in the late 1500’s, which is considered the beginning of their ‘dark age’, getting conquered by Thailand while slowing losing their Mekong delta region to Vietnam. Anyway, so the Cambodian temple is in current day Laos.

The first thing you’ll notice about the site of Vat Phou itself is how few people are there! I rolled up on my scooter around mid-morning, and didn’t see any other tourists around. I bought the ticket and then they give you a lift in a shuttle bus for about 5 minutes to the base of the ‘mountain’ where Vat Phou is located. It was a cloudy morning and at the temple, and there were maybe 7 or 8 people wandering the whole complex. It’s pretty cool to have such a place mostly to yourself! Definitely a worthwhile spot for the few visitors who spend much time in southern Laos.

Not very difficult to get a shot with nobody in it

cool looking path connecting the front promenade with the upper temple

So that was a nice way to kill a couple hours. I still had plenty of time to ride around the area for a bit, which is kind of neat because the area nearby, Champasak, was the seat of the very small, independent Champasak kingdom (1713-1904). There’s really not a lot to see, but it has some nice houses.

So while Vat Phou is cool, it is not the main attraction of the region. For the backpackers the most popular thing to do is the Bolavan Plateau Loop, which is a 3-5 day moto loop, and waterfall-hopping around the region’s primary geographical feature, the Bolavan Plateau. Which I happened to have already done, 14 years ago! My most striking memory from that trip wasn’t the scenery though, it was the two girls I was with falling off their moto in construction area, straight into a mud puddle, and being covered literally head to toe in mud haha. They were fine, they just needed a good hosing off!

But nowadays more people opt to do the Thakek Loop instead, which is another 6 hours north, where the scenery has the classic limestone karst formations. Or instead of doing the full Bolavan Plateau Loop, they do a 2-3 day mini loop. Which is what I’d be doing! Saving my energy for the Thakek loop. So the following day I had my small backpack pack and was off to do the mini-loop! Coffee and waterfalls!

Kratie Province

July 5, 2025

Time for some more blog posts. After 5.5 months of poker with no real breaks, I decided to take a few weeks off and head to southern and central Laos, where I haven’t been to in - lets see, 14 years. I’ve always liked Laos, it was one of my favorite parts of my Southeast Asia trip when I was 25, and I was looking forward to going back. On my way there I decided to take a pit stop in the town of Kratie, in Cambodia, where you can see the Irrawaddy dolphins. There’s only about 100 of them left, which is actually a decent improvement in the last decade, as there’s been a campaign to not let them go extinct in the Mekong. There’s also three other populations of them in Southeast Asia – in the Philippines, Indonesia, and Myanmar (the Irrawaddy River is in Myanmar), all with less than 100. But fortunately in Bangladesh, their numbers are over 6,000. In all these places there has been an effort to make seeing the dolphins an eco-tourism money maker, to varying degrees of success.

In this part of the Mekong the dolphins live in basically 150km stretch of the river up to the Laos border, where there is a set of waterfalls/big rapids. The fact that this section of waterway is unnavigable by boat is good for the dolphins. Although economically speaking, this set of rapids is a real killer, especially for Laos, cutting them off from commercial river shipping.

River emptying into the mekong, the water is moving pretty good in rainy season

This guy should be on a promo-poster for boatmen everywhere, god damn.

I hopped off the minibus in the town of Kratie and then hopped in a tuk-tuk to a smaller guesthouse just outside of town along the Mekong. Normally I don’t like staying outside of town, but this place rents scooters, and with a scooter you can stay basically anywhere, no problem. It’s interesting that even though the street I was on runs right next to the river, almost all the houses were set up to face the street, with basically no effort made to give themselves a back-facing living space or extra river views. I do understand that these are small, basic, wooden houses and people don’t have much money, but I suppose I expected that there would be some wooden balconies built in the back to look out over the river, or something like that, but nope.

Anyway, I got situated in my room and waited for someone to grab me a scooter. The place was run by a friendly local woman, who has a foreigner husband, although he wasn’t in town and it sounds like he spends most of the time out of the country. The guest house is known in town because they have a big pizza kiln, and while I rarely eat western food in Cambodia, I might have to make an exception here. Actually what I meant is I almost never eat western food for dinner, I do eat western breakfast, and sometimes salads/sandwiches for lunch. Cambodia doesn’t really do breakfast food, well they do but it’s mostly just small variations of the same noodle/rice dishes that they’d have for lunch or dinner.

Soon enough I got my ride, and I was off north of the city to the boat launch where you can get to the dolphins. It was 4pm and I had until 5pm before they closed up shop. I found it alright, I was the only person around, I paid the $10 ticket and ended up getting my own personal boat + driver. Nice. I had my long telephoto lens ready to go in hopes of getting some good photos of these guys. It wasn’t long before the driver pointed some out in the distance. You can see them, but they only come up for a few seconds at time. They’re quite loud though, you can easily hear them expelling air from their blowhole even if you don’t see them. And they are friggen hard to take photos of! You see one come up and then try to extrapolate where exactly it will pop up about 30-45 seconds later. And the only way to get a good shot of their head is right when it resurfaces (and if you have a good angle and are close enough). It’s very tricky.

We had an hour on the boat, and after 30 minutes of trying to get even a halfway decent photo of these things, I decided it was futile and just decided to mostly sit back and enjoy being on the mighty Mekong in the presence of such a critically endangered animal. Although if I had to do it all over again I probably would have signed up for the kayaking trips they do to see the dolphins. They don’t like boat motor noises. It was a nice afternoon on the river though, and I did get a few shots of some dark, schlong-like objects partially out of the water!

What I liked even better than the dolphins was just simply riding around the countryside at sunset. Cambodia is known for the their classic wooden houses in rural areas, and the mekong region especially has a lot of them. And they seem to be pretty unique to just Cambodia, I don’t recall seeing anything with this styling in Thailand, Laos, or Vietnam. So I spend that evening, as well as a good chunk of the next day driving around and marveling at the houses.

It’s very hot during the day, so a lot of people shop at night

In the next town over there’s some very old French colonial buildings (almost 100 years old) that are right in the middle of the market area, which is kind of cool to see. Word on the street is that they’re going to get knocked down for being unsafe though, rather than restored, which is a bummer. You’d think in 2025 there’d more of an effort to preserve these old heritage buildings, but maybe there’s no money for it or it’s not worth the effort. I don’t really know. But I appreciated the buildings.

I’m a big fan of Cambodian market fashion

It’d be a shame if they knocked this down

And that’s about all for my quick stop in Kratie. Here’s a bunch of houses I liked : )

Songkran Festival

May 22, 2025

Every year April brings one of Cambodia’s biggest holidays, Songkran, aka the water splashing festival, which marks the end of the harvest season and the beginning of the new (solar) year on the Buddhist and Hindu calendar. It’s a three day official holiday in Cambodia and most businesses shut down and many people go back to the provinces to celebrate. In years past the water splashing part has been pretty lowkey, especially compared to countries like Thailand, who go all out for Songkran, where it’s essentially a country-wide water fight. In Phnom Penh if you weren’t up north by Wat Phnom where they hold the festivities, you might notice some kids walking around with squirt guns and that’s about it. But in the last few years, perhaps a bit jealous of the notoriety the festival has gotten in Thailand, the government has decided to promote and expand the festival a bit more with streets roped off for pedestrians and food vendors, official parties, DJ sets, etc.

I decided to stay in a hotel up closer to where all the action is at this year. Suddenly every corner shop now has a wide selection of water guns out front. And baby powder - also part of the tradition, a less desirable one, where people slap your cheek with a handful of it. People from other parts of town started showing up in the streets in the late afternoon equipped with their arsenal of water guns. Tons of pickup trucks with a full load of people in the bed ply the streets looking for targets. I didn’t realize there were so many nice pick-up trucks in Phnom Penh! Store owners set up tables on their storefronts to hang out, drink beer, and spray people with hoses and their heavy duty spray guns - the type where the gun is connected by a hose to a large tub of water. If they feel like being particularly “playful” they fill the tubs of with bags of ice.

So the first afternoon was pretty fun, I bought a $5 gun and went around getting spraying and getting sprayed, no phone no camera etc, as it’s basically expected you’re gonna get soaked. It’s definitely a holiday for the young, teens and early twenties people everywhere. But really there’s only so much spraying and spraying back that I can partake in before the fun starts to wear off. And I will say that the Cambodians do particularly enjoy targeting the Barangs (Barang literally means French person, as they were the original colonizers, but now it just means any white person) as perhaps a form of socio-economic class revenge, as everyone is an equally fair target in Songkran. And what other time of year will you have to spray one of these absurdly rich, spoiled foreigners in the face with a water gun?! Which is all perfectly fine with me, but of course some teenage boys like to be particularly obnoxious with the direct face shots from 3 feet away. And then you’ve got the baby powder, most people will ask if they can slap some on your cheeks in a friendly playful manner, others (teenage boys) will not.

Anyway I still had a nice time going out for a bit in the afternoons. Sometimes I’d grab the camera for a bit and take some photos, which of course is always a bit risky, but most people were pretty nice about it and only gave me small squirts seeing that I had a big camera in tow. Going out for a jog was also pretty fun, the sprays were welcome, and you can be sure you’re not going to overheat!

Now what I did not realize is that the street I was staying on would be completely gridlocked with traffic every evening. All those pickup trucks completely clog up the whole area, so there’s no way for a ride-share to come pick you up to go anywhere, like a casino. Now I don’t mind getting soaked in the very hot afternoons, as I’m used to getting soaked (in sweat) basically every late afternoon at the gym or going for a run! But once I change clothes and need to get ‘to work’ that’s a different story. There was basically no way for me to get out of my hotel without walking a few blocks through the party zone. I’d put on my rainjacket and try to slink my way out through the crowds without being a target.

Proper etiquette is that if you’re a normally dressed person with no water gun, you’re not supposed to get sprayed, and they do give this respect to older Cambodians, but not so much for barangs! Which is to say, I almost never made it out without getting wet. There’s always some teenage boy out there who sees a no-fun foreigner trying not to get wet and has to take it upon themselves to remedy that situation. After multiple days of this, and showing up to the (already cold) casino wet, I’m not gonna lie, I was ready to beat someone’s ass. And it takes quite a bit to get me to that point!

So lesson learned, I will not be staying anywhere up by Wat Phnom during Songkran again. Better to walk or take a tuk tuk to where the action is at than be permanently stuck in the middle of it! Anwyway, here’s a few pics from the few blocks around my hotel.

Cambodia Photo Dump

May 11, 2025

Just a collection of photos from places I’ve been in the last few months. Phnom Penh, Sihanoukville, Koh Kong, Koh Rong Samloem.

Doing a visa run and spending the night in Koh Kong

Not much to do but relax and enjoy the sunset

Editing photos of Koh Kong on the island of Koh Rong Samloem

The sunset spot in Mpai Bay, Koh Rong Samloem

Back to Sihanoukville, Independence Beach

Green and red seems to be the traditional Cambodian boat coloring scheme

Another look at the deep sea port from further out

The building never stops

April 27, 2025

Not much to say here, just a collection of the many construction projects that are currently ongoing. It’s not all abandoned building! These aren’t little kiddy projects either.

Sihanoukville at Night

April 23, 2025

If you want creepy, you got it!