Drugged in Cambodia - worst of traveling, top 5

1. As the backpacker bus from Bangkok reaches Poipet on the Cambodian border realize that you are the only traveler on the bus whose ticket is valid only to Poipet instead of the site of Anchor temples, Siem Reap, 8 hours on from the border. Get absolutely pissed when the driver demands you to flash in more bahts to take you to Siem Reap and walk out of the bus.

Flag down a tuk tuk and enter Cambodia on your own. Not knowing what's awaiting, feel a certain sense of pride of not letting those scammers take advantage of you. Flag down a pickup truck and let it tour you around the nasty little hell hole that's Poipet while it tries to pull more passengers. After an hour's tour find yourself crammed on the tiny cargo bed with 15 adults and three kids - it's painful. When the pick up finally hits the road let a weather worn old woman drink from your water bottle when she asks for a sip. Take a gulp yourself. You stupid jackass!

Drop your head to your knees as if life had been sucked out of your body and feel yourself falling asleep like you'd just taken a kick ass sleeping pill which makes Tenox, Stille Nacht and Imovane seem like pills adequate only for the lobotomized.

Regaining consciousness later on realize that your wallet is missing and then thank God when you retain it after noticing that the fat stupid ugly woman opposite you is hiding it in her skirt. Finally in Siem Reap realize that the reason why she smiled handing it back to you was not because she was sorry but because she still had your camera.

2. Manaus Brazil - the old rubber capital of South America with a pink opera house left as a reminder of its days of glory before rubber seeds were smuggled to Malaysia and the rubber industry in the Amazon consequently ruined, is nice only if you have a fetish for begging cripples. Otherwise steer clear from it.

3. On your first day in Montego Bay, Jamaica, find your way out of the resort area since it just sucks. Let your traveling duo be approached by a fellow, who only seems to want to show you that he excels in questioning you on where are you from, what do you do, and what is your name, blaah, blaah, blaah. Half an hour later, as the guy gets more and more tedious by the minute, exchange a few words in Finnish with your friend and decide to ditch the bore.

Next, learn that labeling this dude dull was a serious error of judgement, when he demands to be payed for being your guide to this shit hole while a group of his comrades suddenly appears from nowhere and surrounds you to make sure you understand the gravity of his demand. After an attempt to beat Jamaicans at 100 meter sprint race, relent and give the bugger 20 bucks. Hate Jamaica ever since.

4. Meet the only hot English teacher on the planet in a guesthouse on the outskirts of Beijing, China. Have a great night out in Sanlitun whisking down Tsingtaos like you had just escaped a desert monastery run by the sisterhood of thou shalt not drink.

Wake up seriously hangover 5 minutes before your bus to Simatai to see the Great Wall of China. On the way, eat the leftovers of a spinach pie that did not taste good to begin with. Feel a little sick and eat nothing the whole day - after all you've got a dinner date with the hottie that night. At dinner, refuse to eat, but agree to the suggested albeit slightly odd drink of warm lemon juice mixed with milk, which is supposed to make you feel better. After a few sips, politely excuse yourself as you storm out of the bathroomless restaurant to puke behind the corner. Repeat this a few times and do not wonder why the hottie never asked for your e-mail address.

5. Only's, the bar favorite in Peterborough, Ontario, Canada, ran out of KLB Breweries' Raspberry Wheat one night. I cried.

Yahoo confuses me with a murder convict - 3 blogging do's

1. After checking how well (or badly, to be more precise) your blog is doing in Google's search engine try to cheer yourself up by switching to Yahoo. As your blog's Yahoo performance is even worse, see if Yahoo can even find you. When it does, repeat the search on images. Be blown away by the fact that Yahoo produces three results: an image of you, another very shady image of you with some sort of Finnish celebrities and an image of a Finnish woman, who was convicted of a tripple murder in Sweden nearly 20 years ago. Sweet. Click here to see the resemblance.

2. Become a Facebook slut: Approve all friend requests from people who've shown an interest in your blog even if you've never heard of them, let alone met them. It's for the greater good of the blog! And you might find some interesting reads in the process, such as my new friend Ade's blog which features graphic presentations about everything ranging from phases of the moon to the pattern of how dental caries is formed in human teeth. Who would have thought it starts from eating. Sweet tooth. Click here, if you want to see what it does to you.

3. Excuse yourself from getting farther and farther away from your blog's designated topic as it still is quite hard to write a travel blog when your flight is six weeks away, and the only traveling you do is walking from home to work - something you admittedly did twice within the last 13 hours as you had to walk back at 2 AM in order to send an important e-mail you somehow managed to forget to send when you left. Not so sweet.

10 Do's for Sugar Beach, Sipalay

10 Do's for for Sugar Beach, Sipalay, Negros, Philippines

1. To get to Sugar Beach cross yet another tidal river. Upon arriving to the stream realize, that the little boy who accompanied you from the trike is hallucinating about being your man to paddle you over. Look around. There's no one else there. Ask the boy (on the left) how old is he. "Eleven", he says. This is child labour! After making sure that he only does this only on the weekends when he is not in school allow him to take you over but tip him heftily.

2. For once wish there was another Finn around so that you could laugh at the Swiss run guesthouse Takatuka (Takatuka is only one k short of mullet in Finnish).

3. The sun finally out! Run like crazy to find a boat that's going out. Find out that it is the stupid market day and that's when everybody goes to Sipalay proper even though the weather's been crap for the last week and now's the perfect day to go snorkeling.

4. Screw that. Charter your own boat with the local guys from the nearby village.

5. Wonder why you need three guys to take you out. Learn that it is for one of them to operate the boat and show you around the made for snorkeling wreck 40 minutes from the beach, for the other to light your cigarettes for you when it gets to windy for, um, amateurs in the middle of the sea (sorry mum, in case you had not noticed I'm smoking again) and for the third to climb palm trees to get you overdosed on coconuts on a deserted beach after two hours at the wreck.

6. Freak out upon seeing a two year old whacking a coconut with daddy's machete.

7. Meet Mark at 8 o'clock next morning when hiring the guys to take you out again. By 8.15 learn that he too is nursing a broken heart after a grimy affair with an Angelina Jolie look-alike, who is now in Cebu out of all places. Form the most pathetic snorkeling duo of all times. When your trip, which required yet one dead cellphone and a nasty coral cut, is cut short by rain, just laugh it all off. Hilarious in retrospect, maybe?

8. Forget about your resort and move your business to the village. Let Rowena cook you boneless milkfish, calamaries and sinigang and then some jack fruit, tarapple, papaya and mango fruit salad. Amazing.

9. Wonder wether the following sentence would work as an opening line in a novel about backpacking: "Like all long time travellers, I have become rather fond of my voice. In fact I prefer listening to myself telling the same old story from Poipet, Hong Kong, San Salvador or wherever to any of my fellow traveller's stories. They are the same anyway, but mine are more exciting."

10. Decide it's time to get you back in a city. Bus it to Dumaguete and splash on an aircon double with a telly.

Top 10: The most common questions people ask, when they hear about you leaving

1. Obvious: Where are you going to go?

2. Surprising: Did you think about this for long or did you just decide all of a sudden that instead of going to work next Monday, you are going to travel around the world?

3. Perfect: Can I come and see you?

4. Bland: Did you win a lottery?

5. The next best: Do we still have time to have a few beers one evening before you go?

6. Clever: Can I have your apartment?

7. Endearing: When's your farewell party?

8. Practical: How much is this trip going to cost?

9. Insightful: Can I write a feature article on you after you've been stoned in Goa for 11 months?

10. Random: What? Again?

Can I e-mail my blog entries to my blog? 5 remarks on blogging

Testing, testing...

If you can see this, the answer is yes.

How bizarre is the world of blogging! Here are some early remarks:

1. It feels so strange to pimp one's blog in blogging communities. I mean, how narcissistic is that for a person who's slightly too old (well, too old) to be part of the YouTube generation. And what ever happened to the whole generation discourse anyway? Did the X generation corrupt the concept's explanatory power by making babies, getting jobs and turning into their parents who were just as lost as the x-ers were when they were their age.

2. Blogging is so much fun you can easily let a Tarantino movie be on telly and not be distracted by it.

3. Shit! Quentin is about to turn into a zombie and this is a Robert Rodriguez movie.

4. One can add all kinds of widgets, gadgets and feeds into one's blog without having an idea what they are about. I would not have guessed this morning that by tonight I would have a feedburner account. And I'm still guessing what's it good for.

5. Getting a google analytics account for one's blog does not make one a dickhead. Or does it?

5 Random observations made the day after you told everyone you were going to leave - 7 weeks to take off

1. Recovering from a surprise hangover, drag yourself to your little neighborhood corner store right before it closes at 9PM. Reaching for a box of tea bags suddenly realize that you better not buy your normal super saver extra large box as there is no way in hell you are going to drink all that tea, unless you find your inner Englishman who has so far successfully managed to hide within your subconscious. Experience a strong feeling of finality.

2. As the online auction for your vinyl singles is approaching its deadline, learn that the punk rock singles bought when you were 15 and drunk out of your face16 years ago at a Midnight Sun summer festival in Lahti have become collectors items. Wondering how rich you would be if you had been drunk every day through your punky teen years between 13 and 17 marvel your prospects of making at least 450 euros out of just 4 singles for which you paid the equivalent of 13 euros in good old Finnish marks.

3. Holy shit! I get more money out of those singles than what my air fare to Delhi cost me!

4. Mothers like Skype from the minute they first try it, but they really should understand that the whole idea of an online video cam call is that you can't fiddle with your face. It looks stupid, mom (on the left).

5. Steve Toltz's A Fraction of a Whole might be the funniest book ever written and although The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga is an exhilarating read, the right address for the Booker prize 08 would've been Australia. Now Oz only gets to receive me. I doubt that will soothe the nation.

10 Do's Before Leaving Home, part I

1. Ride a tram through your old neighborhood just to know if it has changed since you moved out. Be sorry for the fact that the lovely oriental food store that used to be downstairs your flat is now gone but the office for the organisation for people with prostate problems, which used to be such a lovely welcoming to your guests in your single days, is still there.

2. Become a computer geek after purchasing a tiny Samsung NC10 for writing a blog. Learn to skype and to compare virus detection programs which you never had to worry in your carefree days as a happy Maccer.

3. Find freedom from materia by selling everything you can in order to increase your budget. After your enlightenment do look down on everyone who shops for stuff they are unlikely to ever really need and preach them about the effects on environment that their excessive consumption is bound to have.

4. Wonder if you've become a pompous hippy ass after blowing hundreds of euros on a new Osprey Waypoint W80 pack (it's amazing), hiking gear (seriously, I'm going to use that Haglöfs fleece and that Puma shirt will look nice when having a few beers after a hike (to the nearest bar?)), a new computer, vaccinations for the most unlikely but impressive sounding diseases (well, a hippy would never get vaccinated for Japanese encephalitis, that's why they are called hippies, right?) and so on. Decide againt it.

5. Meet all kinds of mindless trolls as you look for the perfect tenant to take care of your upkeep when you finally are on the road by submitting their rent on time every month. When you finally land on the perfect couple resist the temptation of asking them whether their sex life is satisfying since you don't want them to break up while you're gone. Get absolutely blasted after your voucher for a monthly income is finally signed.

6. Try to be as precise as possible when filling in the application form for a 10-day Vipassana meditation course. Don't even flinch when answering the question what are the exact quantities of alcohol you've consumed during the last two years and where exactly did you force that awful liquid down your throat.

7. Be pleasently surprised when you find out that your sincere answer "a few beers on Fridays after work every now and then" does not make you a reject for the course. Bless the Buddhists for being so open minded.

8. Use every single opportunity to see your friends even if it

means being in the presence of alcohol cause you are not going to see them for a while. (One of those nights in the pic on the right.)

9. Juggle #8 with not showing up hungover and reeking of alcohol every Saturday when you go see your mom, cause you're not going to see much of her either in the near future and don't want her to remember you by your park chemist's odour.

10. Oh yeah: working as much as you can, ploughing through LP's and online travel forums, seeing the dentist and the doctors you've done your best to avoid in the last few years, and being parsimonious when appropriate all contribute to your comfort once you're on the way.