Sunrise over Mazunte Beach

Some beautiful sunrise over the beach where I currently stay. Enjoy the pictures and come visit :)

Next Months on the Beach, Come Visit

Following long months of arduous travels, the time has come to relax and focus more on Colnect. The video below shows the room I've rented near the beach in Mazunte, Oaxaca, Mexico. I intend to stay here for the next 3 months. There's an extra bed for guests so if you know me, you can probably come and stay over by the beach.

Less than a minute from my room to this

Birds and Seals en Route 1

My last scenic road in the US, route 1 between San Francisco and Los Angeles didn't disappoint me. Beautiful nature on the coast and more in land. We actually did our most intense hike in the US here in Big Sur towards Sykes Hot Springs. It's 10 miles in each direction (so 20 miles return == 32km) to get to some nice hot springs near a river in the thick of woods. Got some pictures there that I wouldn't share online :) Anyway, enjoy the ultra zoom of my camera here below.

Down the 101 from Oregon to California

The US is packed with so-called scenic routes. They almost all feature stunning views which make a US road trip such a beautiful amazing experience. Often pictures cannot really encapsulate the feeling of open air views but here are a few anyway.

Our cool Ford Focus is named Billy and we got him in Texas. He has been serving us well for thousands of miles already.

As we now have a car we got some camping gear and do camp outdoors when we don't stay at people's houses in towns and cities.

Waves splashing and it looks like a gazer, but it's not.

Some of the giant red woods drifted far away.

A few hours later we started seeing some huge living trees.

While I'm opposed to riding horses, the picture still looks good.

Our rideshare people enjoying one of the scenic views

Into Laos on a Boat

A cock in Chiang Khong - a sleepy Thai border town

It has been three days of traveling from Pai, Thailand into Luang Parbang, Laos. One day exchanging buses in Thailand and two more days on a slow boat after crossing the border to Laos. While having a slow boat on the Mekong may sound cool, it's not that amazing. The view is really beautiful but quite monotonous. The boat is filled with falangs (foreigners) as the locals prefer the cheaper and faster buses nowadays. Felt a little bit like a college class trip.

Enjoy the pictures.

Frognector taking in some Mekong breeze

Feels a bit like a class trip for falangs (foreigners) herded into Laos

Cattle transported on the Mekong

The bulls didn't pay for their boat ride but I doubt
they'd be happy when they reach their destination

Only at the end of the last day we realized the boat's
roof can be opened so as to allow soaking in more sky

Mekong beach

The Good Samaritan Day

It's been a while since my last blog post and that's because I don't see you commenting here. I figured nobody reads what I write and gave it a rest. Then a few of my friends were asking why I'm not putting anything new... OK, here goes...



So yesterday seems to have been full of good deeds for me. Don't know why, I'm a horrible person on a regular basis. It started with a simple thing of letting a Czech neighbour recharge his Kindle using my laptop and continued with me playing happy birthday to a South African girl who just turned 30. I then managed to sadden her by asking a question that likely reminded her of some bad times in her life. I did apologize though.

My next good deed was already at night time on my way back to my coconut hut. I've decided to move from the splendid room I had in Palolem to a shabby coconut hut as the former was approximately 3 minutes walk to the beach and the current is about 20 seconds walk. While some of you may not appreciate the difference that makes, it does. Here it's easier to be social. There was easier to be secluded.

So anyway, on my way back to the room these two Israeli girls I probably saw before heard me speaking Hebrew and turned around to ask me if I can help them. Their pictures, transferred from their camera's SD card to their USB Disk-On-Key, were scrambled. Don't know why really but they weren't copied properly but were deleted from the SD. Damn, not fun to lose pictures. They were quite upset about it.

Following some trials I managed to undelete most of the pictures from their SD card and as such was granted with praises as me being their prince and I should marry them as well as promises that they'll do anything I wanted. As my back hurts often, sitting all day working in front of the computer, I was shooting (perhaps too high) for a massage. No, not a full body one, just a plain one. Was likely too much for them. They offered me breakfast at some place I wouldn't wanna eat breakfast in but I chose to accept their gratitude. Altogether was a nice late breakfast.



On the bright side, following a Skype video conversation with my brother and my close friend, I went out with them to explore the beach. Palolem doesn't have much night life nowadays. Really not the same Palolem I stayed in over a month about 5 years ago. We saw a bonfire. I saw balloons. There were only an English couple there and the woman asked me to join in and play guitar. As bonfires are often a good thing, we sat down and saw I managed to do another good deed by playing nice nightly music to her boyfriend, celebrating his 47th birthday, and us.



Sitting by the bonfire was nice and more people tagged along as often is the case. My Czech neighbour, two German guys and about seven English teenagers doing what English teenagers seem to do so well in Palolem: drink loads of alcohol and talk loudly. Altogether a nice group formed and the night was pleasant.

So as a bit of a summary, although I am focus on my work on Colnect here, it's good that I can go for an occasional swim and play guitar by the moonlight and waves.