Let's actually do Cambodia properly this time and I mean it this time (for a week)

I seem to have an aversion to Cambodia that I don't have for other popular South East Asian destinations, but it's one I've tried to get over by staying for incrementally longer periods each time I buy the $20 visa and head into the kingdom of tuk tuks, amateur con artists and more tuk tuks. The first time I stayed for about 20 minutes, the next time a couple of days and this time more than a week, so it must be growing on me. Actually, I'm not sure why I haven't spent much time here before now.

It might all come down to the bad first impressions I had of the country, which were being scammed a fistful of dollars on a visa run in March 2011 and a few dollars more by a money changer when I went back in November. Although Cambodia isn't quite as bad as Vietnam in that regard, it left some indignant consumer rage in my system that cancelled out any awe I might have felt wandering around the ancient temples, which are spoiled by too many tourists anyway. Those photos from the Angkor Archaeological Park took ages to crop down and are my crowning achievement in precision tourist genocide. Hmm, maybe I should have used a less sensitive term.

Luckily for me, Southern Cambodia was a lot less photogenic and I seemed to spend a lot of the time deliberately taking photos of things that annoyed me. But for all its faults, I'll probably come back some time to stay slightly longer again. I can't say the same about Vietnam.

Tamest dreams

This will be the final instalment in my Tedious Dreams Trilogy, I promise, but I wanted to talk about lucid dreams - something I've been intrigued by for years and actively pursued for a while, before my tragic and embarrassing lack of imagination caused me to grow disillusioned. You'll see why.

Shit optimistic Khao San Road salesmen expect tourists to say

The Philippines' non-generous 21-day visa and the impending austerity festival of Passover taking Jackie out of action meant I was back to living the bachelor lifestyle for a couple of weeks and trying desperately to find something new to keep me occupied in this well-travelled part of the planet. As ever, that meant a flight connection in Bangkok with a few days of regeneration and hibernation in its irritatingly convenient tourist district.

Bangkok's Khao San Road area deserves all the criticism it gets, but I have to admit it's a bloody convenient place to spend a night or two before booking a bus to anywhere the hell else in Thailand. Walking around these packed streets and getting hassled by suit salesman and taxi drivers every five seconds is surprisingly non-stressful though, and my theory is that it's so annoying, it stretches annoyance beyond its elastic limit until it snaps and becomes funny instead.

Here are the scenarios I imagine these overly optimistic salesmen are imagining in their heads when they make their cold sales pitches to clearly uninterested passersby.

Ohhh, THAT Philippines

The typhoons that spoiled my last visit to the Philippines in 2011 did such an efficient job, they even washed away my memories of this country's more horrible aspects, which all came flooding back in the two days I spent in Cebu. (All this weather imagery is just for effect, it was only comfortably cloudy this time).

I specifically chose Cebu as my entry point over Manila and Angeles because I'd been to those other places before and have no desire to ever go back. Unfortunately, it turns out Cebu's basically the same, just on a more compact scale. It may be on a dinky island, but it's no paradise.

Things were even more pronounced as spending nearly two months in Australia meant I'd lost my South East Asia sensory immunity, and walking around the dangerous city streets I was overpowered by the stink of the jeepneys and polluted streams, the trash strewn all over the place, the depressing young girls hanging off the arms of foreign pensioners, the even more depressing beggars rolling around with skateboards for legs and the parodoxical holy imagery decorating dens of sin.

It was also distressing to notice other people's perception of me shifting from generally failing to acknowledge that I even exist in Australia (perfect) to being openly stared at and a target for all sorts of scams and services. Before Cebu, I'd been able to comfort myself that any times I might have been approached by prostitutes in Thailand, there'd been enough ambiguity that I could pretend they were asking about something else. But now I don't have that comfort any more, unless 'fucking' means something else in Cebuano. Why did I leave Australia?

I'm in this country for three weeks, so if this doesn't all become darkly humorous soon I might lose my mind.