When selling bootleg books didn’t work, the boy turned to begging for food. He looked 12 and was still perfecting his pity pitch.

After four days in Siem Reap (and another week in Sihanoukville), I got used to saying no to child sellers and beggars. I read enough articles to know giving them money does more harm than good:

It was while sitting on a riverside restaurant on the Mekong Delta in the Vietnamese town of Chau Doc, which borders Cambodia. The resto floats on metal drums and bobs gently with the wash from passing boats.

You can see slender ladies with conical hats rowing their canoes across the river to visit a friend in a floating home, who might be washing her hair while crouching on her front porch.

That’s when it happened. “Holy crap,” I thought, “I’m really in Asia! Holy crap, I’m really traveling!”

Coming from the country of soccer is wonderful. From Zimbabwe to Vanuatu, you can be sure that your nationality will be instantly recognized – even loved – by the people you talk to. And that admiration will be instantly transferred to you.

Coming from the country of soccer is horrible. Especially if the wounds of defeat are still gushing blood. Or if, like me, you understand piddles about sport.

We’ve been together for month now, and it’s time we had that talk. I don’t know where you see this going, but I could say “the hell with it” to the rest of my year-long trip and stay here with you.

The road had ceased being a road and it was now Mars after a bombing. Even when it was a road it still didn’t deserve being called one. It was as if the local authority had cleared the bush, dumped loads of rocks on it and said, “There, deal with it.”

Whatever holes were there, the morning rain enlarged them so they could, in theory, support a small reservoir for the nearby villages.

We were escorted from the car by an entourage of village children who heard two white people would be spending the night in their community.

Understand that this is like learning that your neighbours would receive a visit from Madonna for a live performance in their living room.

One of the hardest parts of traveling to the Papua New Guinea highlands is knowing what to do when surrounded by forty people who behold you in utter rapture.

Stroll into any market in the Mt. Hagen region and you’ll soon have a captive audience that sees a white person every two or so years.

When someone dies Highlands of PNG, the village gathers for days in collective mourning, called a haus krai. To attend a funeral, where the bereaved wail loudly and publicly, is a journey that tries one’s body and emotions. That’s what we learned when we were invited to grieve for a man that was recently beheaded. Listen to the report.

It doesn’t take long to see that the eastern Australian backpacking trail, which stretches form Sydney to Cairns, is geared for the sub-30 set. Hundreds of young’uns, mostly European, flock to the Gold an Sunshine Coasts chasing sunny beaches, bountiful alcohol, and beach-beautiful bodies.

Nothing wrong with this, but it’s not for everyone. Which is the reason that travellers 30 and above are a rare sight: it’s easy for them to feel they have outgrown this kind of budget-minded tripping.

When he published his Round-the-World Travel Guide, Marc Brosius had the good sense to print, right on the first page, the following caveat:

“WARNING: This site has been known to change people’s lives!”

And wouldn’t you know it, it did.