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1. Good Karma

   The world should be governed by well travelled people. We know how important it is to do well by the people we meet, be they locals or fellow travellers. And in the end you will get back whatever you paid forward. This is something I strongly believe in.

2. Food

   Being a traveller is like being a soldier. Eat while you can. You never know when your next meal will be. Food is one way of taking in a new culture and experiencing new things, so when it comes to food you should always go local or at least have a go at it.

3. Camera Memory Cards

   Murphy’s Law in this case states that whenever you see something truly amazing your camera will angrily flash at you and give you the finger. By the time you deleted some of those old crappy stupid photos your first ever elephant will have vanished into thin air or only show you his bum. Always have enough memory left by the time you leave your crappy guesthouse room in the morning and always have a spare memory card, so you can switch. And always switch early rather than too late.

4. Patience

   If you’re not patient on the road you’ll be miserable a lot. There’s misunderstandings, people around you when all you want is being left alone and there’s waiting, a lot of waiting actually. There are language problems, a lot of hassle with touts and loads of other people trying to take advantage. Just take it easy. After all you could be sitting in an office being bored beyond witless.

5. Passport Photos

   This is something you seriously can’t have enough of. You’ll need them for visa applications, visas and then some more visa applications. In some places getting just four passport photos made can be ridiculously expensive, so stock up when you’re in a cheap place. Get like 20. You’ll thank me later.

6. Condoms

   Although it might be slightly awkward carrying an extra large pack of your favourite flavoured little friends around it’s always a turnoff not having one ready when you so desperately need one. Remember to pack them in a cool and shady spot in your backpack and use them fast. They don’t travel very well.

7. Drugs

   Mushrooms, ganja, alcohol or whatever else takes your fancy. Travellers love trying new things and drugs seem to be very much part of the rite of passage. On the low side they can get you into deep trouble. The kind of trouble where you look at the same room for 10 years or even the kind of trouble that dramatically reduces your life expectancy to zero. On the high side drugs, if used sparingly and if you stay clear of the hard stuff, can make you perceive your surroundings in a completely new and different way. Drugs travel even less well than condoms!

8. Time

   Without time you only have haste and that’s the death of every genuine memorable experience. 23 countries in as many days is not the way you should travel. I’m the last person to tell you how you have to travel, but just this once I’ll have to do exactly that. Take your time, travel slowly, and get to know a place rather than rush through it. Not seeing everything you wanted is just a reason for another trip.

9. Fun

   This one’s quite obvious and it almost didn’t make the list. It’s very important, though. There are many times when you have anything but fun. When you’re sick, frustrated or just plain fed up with it all. This is normal. The trick is to have more fun than not and maybe develop a bit of a selective memory. Forget the bad stuff, except when it makes a great story, and remember the fun.

10. Diarrhoea Pills

    Bombay belly, the bane of all travellers. Very hard to avoid unless you have a stomach that’s not upset by copious amounts of chilli, foreign bugs or undercooked chicken. Once you stood under the shower for hours with food and drink coming out of every opening you realize that what you need is the biggest and most powerful stop-the-runs pill ever produced. Seriously, pack some!

11. Money

    Some backpackers have hit the jackpot. Literally. There was one English dude who won a million bucks on New Zealand’s Lotto system. In case you haven’t been that lucky and mum and dad don’t feel like financing your global escapades, then you need cash. Spend it wisely. Not saying you need a lot of cash to travel, but the more you have the longer you can travel without the inconvenience of work.

12. Common Sense

    Sometimes you can get yourself into a bit of a situation. Thailand and its lady boys or drugs or gambling or a combination of all of em are just a few examples. Just ask yourself what would your mum want you to do? And remember, if she’s got bigger hands than you, put that drink down and have a closer look before you take her home.

Do you have anything to add to this list? I welcome your comments!

This list, which only existed in my head until now, started out with number 3 around 20 years ago and I’ve added destinations and trips to it as I found out about them. In time places moved up and down or disappeared completely as I visited them. There’s obviously many more places I want to see and things I want to do, but there’s got to be something special to make it onto my top 10…

1. Travel up the Congo River
   The Congo, in the heart of Africa, represents for me the magic I associate with that continent. Lush rainforest, genuine experiences and extremely hard travelling!
2. Drive from Capetown to Marrakesh
   When I was little my Dad always brought travel magazines like Tours back home. A lot of them dealt with off road tours through Africa, how to outfit cars, which routes to take and so on. It obviously left an impression on me.
3. Hitchhike from Munich to Beijing
   I was around 9 years old when I first thought it’d be awesome to drive all the way from my hometown to China. In time this has morphed into hitchhiking, as a cheaper, more flexible, but probably more dangerous alternative.
4. Dive and travel Antarctica
   Huge icebergs, penguins, sea lions and many more amazing animals. Just imagine what the underwater world looks like there…
5. Navigate the Mekong River
   I have crossed the Mekong many times in many countries and the idea to help navigate a boat from China all the way to Vietnam has been growing ever since.
6. Explore the Bamiyan valley in Afghanistan
   Ever since I heard about the huge Buddhas I wanted to see them for myself. Even though they have been destroyed by the Taliban regime I still want to go and explore the little caves left behind by Buddhist monks.
7. Experience the Hajj
   I am not a Muslim or very religious, but there’s something about the pilgrimage to Mecca that I find fascinating. Maybe it’s a couple of millions of people in the same place actually believing in a God. That’s got to make for a special atmosphere.
8. Live among the Orang Laut for some time
   The Orang Laut are scattered all across Southeast Asia. The name literally means ’sea people’. Their way of life, so closely connected with the ocean they live on, has always fascinated me and in a way I can identify with that.
9. Travel to the (original) Burning Man
   Nowadays there’s a few BM branches around, but I’d like to see the original in Black Rock Desert in Nevada.
10. Cross the Sahara on the back of a camel
    Just another one of my weird dreams. Call me a romantic with no sense of realism, but I think this would be a fantastic experience.

Will I ever make it to all of those places, do all of those trips? To be honest, I doubt it. There are too many variables. Some of those countries aren’t really that safe (yet), I am perpetually in a state of near bankruptcy and a couple of those trips shouldn’t really be done. That’s not the point of this list though. My wish list ,or dreams if you like, are an indication for the kind of experiences and adventures I want and seek and usually they push my limits a little bit further out. It’s my minds way of telling me that I’m ready for the next step away from my comfort zone.

It’s important to have dreams as well. Without them I might as well work on my tan on Ballerman 6. What are your travel dreams?

Crossing a border can be a daunting and nerve wrecking thing and that might not necessarily have something to do with those 2 kg of cocaine hidden in between your smelly socks.

I always think that customs officials are being trained to put on mean faces, to make you as uncomfortable as humanly possible. You might be getting the look, when you’re in trouble with your girlfriend, but that has nothing on your average customs guy. It’s almost like they have x-ray vision, but they use their superpower for evil and not for good.

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It seems that something bad and shocking is always going on in some place of the world. Be it terrorist attacks, diseases or natural disasters, like cyclone Nargis in Myanmar or the recent earthquake in China. Most of the time this results in western countries issuing travel and security warnings either for the whole country or just for affected areas. This obviously is a good thing or rather it could be a good thing. After all travellers and holiday makers need some kind of safety indicator and their own government should be the natural choice for that. The problem here is that the general population with little travel experience takes those travel warnings at face value and doesn’t usually bother reading them themselves. All they hear in the news is that there has been a catastrophe somewhere and that travel warnings have been issued.

By that point the damage is usually done. Holidays get canceled, travel plans get changed and while everybody feels sorry for the victims everybody is glad not to be caught in the aftermath of it all, even though their specific holiday destination might be completely safe. Obviously you can’t blame people for doing that. It’s a natural reaction, but does it really have to be that way? And then there is the moral question of it all. Should you be enjoying your holiday when there are people suffering and dying just a couple hours flight away? This is a very difficult question and one everybody has to answer for themselves.

On Christmas 2004, when the tsunami struck Aceh Province, I had been living on Gili Trawangan, Indonesia, for about 10 months, teaching diving. Visitor numbers started to drop within a few days of the disaster and kept on dropping over the next weeks, even though our little island was more than 2500 km away from Banda Aceh. In an industry, where your income depends mostly on commission, this is tantamount to suddenly losing your job. Still, I and other dive instructors were in a relatively good position compared to some of the local people. We had savings, had earned a lot more and didn’t need to support a whole extended family.

When disaster strikes it never only affects the people in the disaster areas, but large parts of the overall population, at least in countries that are dependent on tourism and visitor numbers. The financial consequences of the Boxing Day Tsunami were felt all over Indonesia. It was a disaster after the disaster. Millions of dollars were donated, but I dare say that not much of that money made it to the indonesian people not directly affected by the tsunami. Travellers and tourists further worsened their situation by switching to alternative travel destinations.

Only a little bit of research could show that your initial travel destination is completely safe and if it isn’t then there is always the option of travelling to a different spot in the same country. It will help the local population there immensely. Of course that still leaves the matter of morality, but if you had asked an Indonesian after the tsunami what he preferred, then I’m sure the answer would have been that he’d rather earned enough to put food on the table…

Yesterday I woke up and set myself a mission. I was gonna find out as much as I can about Queenstown, New Zealand, from all the different kinds of information that are available to us travellers. First of all there are the normal print media like guidebooks and their newly born siblings, downloadable pdf chapters of guidebooks, but then there is the whole internet. Forums, travel networks, travel wikis and personal travel blogs. I was wondering if I could get the information I wanted from all those sources and how they compared to each other…

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Once in a while you meet someone who is out and about busy “finding him or herself”. I have never fully grasped the concept of this idea. What is it exactly that people try to find? Is it their real self, how they would be without the influences of todays society, or is it how they really want to be?

While this undertaking seems somewhat realistic back in their own country, I find the idea ridiculous when travelling. What makes people think they can find themselves in the alien surroundings of a foreign country when they couldn’t even manage it back in the familiarity of their homes?

The expression in itself implies that somehow somewhere along the road they got lost, otherwise there would be no point in going looking for yourself. And they obviously seem to have a problem with being lost. They might not be happy with themselves and want to change things. But it’s funny how naive some people are. Travelling is not an express ticket to a new personality. It is true that travel changes people. Without my trips I wouldn’t be the person I am today. But even when travelling, with all its amazing experiences and impressions, this is a gradual process and does not happen overnight or during a two week trip.

Moreover I think all this takes away parts of the travel experience. How much can you actually take in looking for yourself in every corner, when you should be looking for new cultures, new experiences, new friends…

The same is true for the problems you carry around with you. How many couples do (or should I say ‘did’?) you know that decide to take a break from their routine and go travelling or on a holiday, just to break up after a couple weeks on the road? Travelling does not solve your problems for you, at best it just puts them safely away somewhere for easy retrieval on your return. And more than likely your problems will try to surface at times. If you drink too much alcohol, then you won’t suddenly become a AA advocate, just because your favorite pub is halfway around the world.

What travelling does, though, is giving you a chance to start making those changes you always thought about on New Years Eve and forgot about after the third drink. Your usual temptations are gone, you are out of your normal routine and you are basically free to do whatever you want. All you need is patience and time. And who knows, you might even stumble upon your lost self somewhere on the way.

Everybody who has been travelling for a bit longer knows that eventually there comes a time when all that saved up money doesn’t amount to that much anymore. You’ve probably seen it coming and acted on it by having rice and sweet chili sauce three times a day, all washed down with a yummy glass of water. The times when you look at your bank account grow longer in the hopes that the problem will just disappear. Then you realize that the first step to solving your problem is to acknowledge it, so you decide to deal with it by listing all your possible options. One option is to just go home, although this is just a temporary solution. What exactly will you do when you get back home? Most likely find some work, save some money and then book another plane ticket. So why not try to get some work while travelling? Now, let’s look at some of the other options out there…

Work & Travel

There is a good chance that you’re from a country that has some kind of agreement with other countries allowing you to work there for up to one year. The most popular destination for that is undoubtedly Australia. There are many more countries out there though. For example New Zealand, Japan or Canada. The maximum age is usually 30 years, which is a bummer really (for me anyways!). It is a very good way of picking up any suitable work, doing it legally at the same time and finding a base for a certain amount of time to chill out. Let’s face it, travelling can be tiring and sometimes you just need a place where you can dump your backpack for a bit longer than just a few days.

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I have done quite a bit of travelling over the last few years. Out of the last 8 years, I have been away from Germany for roughly 6 years and out of all the countries I have been to, I liked Indonesia the best. That definitely had something to do with the people and the surroundings and the underwater world, but a big chunk of it was the actual travelling. Getting from place A to place B. As a traveller you spend an unusual amount of your time on various modes of transport and in many countries that can be an extremely dull experience and you actually start contemplating jumping off whatever vehicle you are on right now or even slitting your wrists, just to relieve the boredom a little.

Every self respecting traveller usually has a couple stories up his sleeve that have to do with transport. Most of them are actually quite horrible, yet, when a few travellers come together it’s just a matter of time until the first stories get told. The worse/better the story the more approval the traveller gets. It seems to be some kind of unstated ritual and it actually is really fun listening to all the stories and telling your own. A couple things I noticed were that the vast majority of those stories come from countries where travelling (from point A to point B) can be quite difficult (which should be kind of obvious) and that the stories seem to get worse the more experience the storyteller had with travel on little money. That and a bit of thinking, which contrary to popular belief I actually do sometimes, led me to the development of my theory of progressive travel.

The Theory

The theory of progressive travel states that the more budget travel experience a person has the more he or she will want to travel to remote and inaccessible places and the more he or she will disapprove of travel in approachable and accessible places.

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Can’t believe that I have been travelling already for six months. Time flies when you’re having fun, right? Anyway, time to have a look at that past half year….

Some of the things that happened or that I did:

1. Bought a car in Australia, drove it for 7000 km and then wrecked it!
2. Watched two sperm whales, five pigs and one turtle get hunted, killed and gutted in Indonesia
3. Had 9.473 unique visitors, which isn’t that much really, but my thanks go out to those boys and girls that do drop in for a visit and maybe even leave a comment!
4. Climbed the volcano on Lombok and lost four toenails in the process
5. Drank far too much Arak/Sopi/Palm Wine…
6. Almost froze to death in Canberra
7. Took 4 different Pelni boats and was the only foreigner on any of them
8. Survived the Outback
9. 37 people have subscribed to my english feeds and 4 to my german feed
10. Dived Alor and snorkelled Banda, two places I had been wanting to visit for years
11. Visited 4 countries (Oz, England, Indonesia, East Timor) and 3 continents
12. Spent 8000 EUR on God knows what…
13. Saw the Komodo Dragons and did not get bitten, yeah!!
14. Sailed the Whitsundays. Loved that and just remembered I didn’t even put a post about that online. Well, it was only a day trip, but to make up for it, have a look at the picture on top…
15. Saw my first two Wombats and then accidentally killed them both with the car. I added some seriously bad karma on to my shoulders that night!
16. I received 4 donations totalling around 90 EUR and my Google ads cam to about 15 USD, so that’s almost my hosting fees for another 3 years, which doesn’t mean I’d reject more donations or would frown at people clicking on me ads…
17. Visited gorgeous Kelimutu again
18. Managed to brush up on my Bahasa Indonesia
19. Worked a lot on my tan
20. Read like 30 books
21. Wrote 29 posts (actually 30 including this one), which could have been more, but I was probably too busy sunbathing…or reading…
22. Took about 8 GB worth of pictures, of which maybe 2GB were worth taking. Have a look at the photos I put online!
23. Managed to free dive down to 25m with a dive time of 1 minute 37 seconds on Banda
24. Was involved in a motorbike accident in Indo
25. Was kind of involved in a car accident in Indo, which provided a fascinating few hours for the locals that happened to be there
26. The average life expectancy of my sun glasses dropped down to roughly a day
27. Met some great people and a few weirdos…
28. Managed to teach an American how to open a beer bottle with a lighter, which was hard work!
29. My Google Page Rank went on a rollercoaster; from 2 to 3 down to 1 up to 2 down to 0 ; I must be doing something wrong, but honestly, I couldn’t give a monkey’s bum…
30. Visited the youngest nation on earth!

If you want to know more about what I’ve been up to these last six months have a look at my archives or click on some of the links above. Enjoy!!

Happy Times

For a very long time the bandanese people had it extremely good. There was no raja or king or whatever to tell them what to do. Only Orang Kaya, village elders, but they were…, well, old! So Life was great! They were in the unique position, that their little group of islands was the only place in the world, where nutmeg and mace grew naturally. They traded with Arabs, Chinese and Malay, made a good living off it and, because growing nutmeg does not actually involve much physical work, spend their time fishing or hanging out in the shade on the beach with friends.

First Encounter Of A Smelly Kind

Now, the Bandanese had known for quite some time that a lot of their produce ended up on the other side of the world with people with unintelligible names in strange countries and were therefore delighted when they finally got a chance to meet some of them in 1512. Those guys, Portuguese as it turned out, filled up their ships with spices and then left Banda mostly to themselves for the rest of the century, concentrating mainly on the northern clove islands of Maluku. Not that the Bandanese were really heartbroken over that fact, since those newcomers always insisted on wearing heavy long clothes at all times, while having an aversion to regular baths at the same time.

Second Encounter Of A Smelly Kind

In 1599 everybody in the Banda archipelago knew that something fishy was going to happen or appear, when Gunung Api, the little but volatile 666m high volcano, started rumbling again after a long time of inactivity. And sure enough, not long after another group of pale sweaty guys turned up, this time from the Netherlands. The Dutch then did not waste any time establishing trading posts, buying as much over prized spices as their ships could hold and then set sail for Europe leaving behind a few sailors to look after their interests. Now when the Portuguese found out that the Dutch had arrived they were less than happy and for the next few years those nations tried their best to kick each other in the crotch.

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Following my 10 most favorite places in Southeast Asia I decided to post my favorite dive spots. I haven’t been to many of the world class dive sites in the area, like Richelieu Rock or Sipadan, so this list reflects merely my personal top 10.

1. Hin Daeng & Hin Muang, Koh Lanta, Thailand
   These are my absolute favorites. There’s the big stuff, like Mantas and Whale Sharks, and little critters, like the Harlequin Shrimp. Because of the depth and the sometimes quite strong current both those sites are not really suited for greenhorn divers.
2. Batu Bolong, Flores, Indonesia
   I had a fantastic dive here with three octopus. They were following and holding on to each other while weird patterns were pulsating down their bodies. Looked like an octopoda threesome to me. Just awesome!! The current was just unbelievable; in places so strong that our bubbles went straight down…
3. Shark Point, Gili Trawangan, Indonesia
   Probably the only dive site on earth, where you are surrounded by 15 turtles when doing your safety stop. Loads of different kinds of sharks and a gorgonian fan at around 20 m populated by pygmy seahorses. There can be some current, but here you always dive with the flow, so no worries…
4. Tulamben USS Liberty, Bali, Indonesia
   Loads of nudibranchs, scorpionfish, hundreds of garden eels waving in the slow current and extremely nosy parrotfish all within the remnants of a WWII freighter. Loads of little swimthroughs with fantastic light shining through holes in the hull.
5. Koh Haa Lagoon, Koh Lanta, Thailand
   This is an easy dive, but can nevertheless be breathtaking. Directly in the lagoon there are a few very curious and very cute porcupinefish, quite a few boxfish, and some garden eel. On the outer edge of the lagoon with it’s two pinnacles there’s barney, the hawksbill turtle and, if you look closely, a ghost pipefish hidden somewhere!
6. Sail Rock, Koh Tao, Thailand
   I did easily 50 dives here. If I would dive there now, I’d probably still know every fish by name. Great pinnacle dive with a chimney starting at 7m and going down to about 20m and a chance to see some big fish.
7. Tulamben Drop Off, Bali Indonesia
   I haven’t seen that much fish here to be honest, but the colors are just stunning. There are loads of huge gorgonian fans all over the site. Their colors made all the more brighter and vivid by the black vulcanic sand that’s everywhere.
8. Chumphon Pinnacles, Koh Tao, Thailand
   Chumphon, Koh Tao’s premier dive site, is a submerged rock formation covered in all different kinds of coral. There’s grey reef sharks around and the chance to see whale sharks. Loads of small critters as well. Can be quite crowded with divers, even for Koh Tao standards.
9. Simon’s Reef, Gili Meno, Indonesia
   This is a huge site starting at 14 m, going down to like 45 m, so it’s an advanced site. This is the place where I managed to capture three beautiful cuttlefish on film. Can be fantastic with visibility reaching 50-60 m. I once missed the whole dive site, due to current and bad visibility and promptly saw a huge stingray, easily 2,5 m long…
10. Temple of the Sea, Palau Perhentian Kecil, Malaysia
    Visibility wasn’t good, when I went diving here, but I could see the potential. There’s bamboo and nurse sharks and loads of barrakuda and jacks. The Temple is a pinnacle covered in soft and hard coral. When you’re in the area and you dive, then this spot shouldn’t be missed!

There are so many more dive spots I want to go to, most of all a liveaboard trip to the Burma Banks near Myanmar and to Alor in Eastern Indonesia. And I haven’t even been to the Philippines yet. If you’re not a diver yet, but would like to learn, then you should check out Koh Lanta, Koh Phi Phi or, for the more adventerous, Koh Lipe in Thailand, the Perhentians in Malaysia and the Gilis in Indonesia. There’s loads of dive sites for beginners there, loads of stuff to see and courses are not too expensive.
What’s your favorite dive sites?

Wherever there are people with money, there will be other people trying to take some of that money away. Sometimes this is especially true when you are travelling. You are far away from home and thus you might seem an easy prey.

In 2001 I met a young german backpacker, let’s call him Hans, in the departure hall of Denpasar Airport on Bali. We were both waiting for the same flight to Darwin, so after a while he came over and we started chatting. He seemed a bit nervous and soon after he wanted to hear my opinion about something that had happened to him the night before.

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