froginmythroat (FIMT)

The most likely medical condition you will get whilst travelling in SE Asia is diarrhoea. Here are some tips from my doctor: Read the rest of this entry »

On the flight from Kuala Lumpur to Indonesia I was sitting next to a friendly collegial gentleman in a suit and we soon struck up a conversation. From the conversation I gathered this much; he was Malaysian, worked for the UN or maybe the World Bank, had a PhD, had been an associate Dean at Oxford, had a daughter my age with a PhD working for the IMF or maybe WTO in Geneva in international arbitration, thought earning $1 million a year was a pretty average amount, had a son in the US doing a Masters in Engineering, knew a lot about the politics of SE Asia countries including Cambodia and Burma, thought New Zealand was a nice country (everyone always does in Asia), had a Chinese wife who was high up in Dell, liked to read blogs, spent a lot of time flying around the world for his job, was going to Indonesia to meet with President Susilo and had meet world leaders such as George Bush and Tony Blair in his work. Now you don’t meet these sorts of people everyday, sitting next to you in economy class, so I wasn’t really sure how much of it to believe. Read the rest of this entry »

“Allah is the greatest, Allah is the greatest, Allah is the greatest. How perfect is He, The One Who has placed this (transport) at our service, and we ourselves would not have been capable of that, and to our Lord is our final destiny. O Allah, we ask You for birr and taqwaa in this journey of ours, and we ask You for deeds which please You. O Allah, facilitate our journey and let us cover it’s (sic) distance quickly. O Allah, You are The Companion on the journey and The Successor over the family, O Allah I take refuge with You from the difficulties of travel, from having a change of hearts and being in a bad predicament, and I take refuge in You from an ill fated outcome with wealth and family.â€? Read the rest of this entry »