Greg

I had the opportunity to fire one in Cambodia, $30 – 25 bullets.

The place had a menu of things; grenades, an array of handguns, uzis, M16s, a tommy gun, a rocket launcher ($200/1 bullet), and the classic AK-47)

I have to admit it was pretty fun, this was my first time shooting a gun, and I did pretty well hitting the target, maybe 60% accuracy. The recoil wasn’t too bad, the gun had a life of it’s own though on automatic.

Afterwards I went to the killing fields and saw the open graves of thousands of Cambodians that had been killed by the khmer rouge. Many of them at the hands of such guns. Seeing skulls, many with with bullet holes in them was a very chilling moment. After that I went to S21 and saw even more examples of pure evil.

Yes shooting a gun is fun, but I am against them. I’m sure shooting up with heroin is also fun, but you wouldn’t encourage it.

I spent a couple of weeks in a jungle town in bolivia and did a couple of expeditions, one to the pampas (wetlands) and one ot the selvas (rainforest).

The pampas were awesome, we had a couple of aligators in our camp that would hide behind the toilets at night, monkeys we would feed pancakes too, and at night we even had a couple of bats in our room. Going to a bar at night in our canoe was also fun, as well as meeting the family that lived there. The highlight was wakeboarding down the amazon river on the back of a dug out canoe :)

After that I did a trip to the selvas whcih I knew would suck a bit, especially in wet season. we hiked for an hour and a half to ge tot camp, wading through 3ft deep fast moving rivers and being eaten alive by insects. I did see some interesting stuff, but I was glad to leave, possibly the group I weren’t the best.

The town was cool, I ended up stuck there as the airport closed. the river got too wet, and the roads washed away. Us backpackers whiled away the nights in the bar in town.

Unless you speak Russian very well, and have a penchant for birch forests and instant noodles you’ll find this pretty boring. I travelled through mongolia and russia mostly on local trains, with maybe 1 or 2 other non-locals on board.

I saw the “trans-siberian” train that all the tourists get, not a single local on board, just a laod of western white people staring out the windows. Actually visiting placesin mongolia, russia and china was far more enjoyable than the train.

I spent 4 days in platzycart(sp),ie 3rd class from irkutsk to moscow, apart from the friendly woman in my “compartment” it was hell. Everytime I think about it I go and hug my bed with a sigh of relief :)