This is the final route the intrepid road trippers ultimately tripped. It was a mighty fine adventure.

It was 7,371km according to Google but the trip meter reckons we drove about 9,700km (including the optional detour to Uluru).

• Catch up on post cards
• Do your washing (+40°C heat excellent for drying)
• Work on your tan (UV Index 13 (Extreme) most days)
• Chat to friends back home (fast internet)
• Meet new people (unisex dorms) ;)

From Travellers Haven Backpacker Hostel

We're spending two days in Mt Isa. Totally awesome.

My second, by more concerted, attempt at working out the economics of the buses for our little Alice Springs Road Trip. It gets a lot more expensive when we don't all squash into the same bus.

When I was in Cambodia I riding along on a motorcycle and I saw a truck that had driven off the side of the road and flipped over. The violence of it made me assume the driver had probably died, although it's possible he hadn't. There were people milling about and moving the cargo from the overturned truck to a number of other smaller vehicles.

I tend to think about the likelihood of various things happening when I'm overseas. I tried to work out the likelihood of being kidnapped in Colombia. I tried to work out the likelihood of my truck falling into the river on that hairy mountain trip from Peru to Bolivia. Or the likelihood of my five hours on a motorcycle containing a fatal accident. These things are hard to figure out. You can't really extrapolate from one event. I could look at the one month in Cambodia before the crash as a sample size of one. In that sample there was one bad car crash. Maybe that is a lot, but maybe it isn't. In one sense, it is definitely a lot, but it doesn't really tell you anything definitive about Cambodia. I have been in Australia my whole life, and have never seen a truck on it's back on the side of the road. How do I compare one crash in one month, to zero crashes in 24 years? You could multiply that one crash by the right proportion to have a guess at how many crashes there would be in 24 years. But you're not really supposed to.

Most people would look at that crash and get a bit worried. Statisticians would look at it and dismiss it because the sample size is too small. People are probably right to be worried, even though they don't have maths on their side. Although the only reason I think they're right to be worried is because I have a whole lot of other associations in my head about car crashes and third world countries.

If I try to ignore all the other associations there probably aren't any useful conclusions I could have made about that one bad crash. So when I saw another bad crash a couple of days later I felt a bit more confident. Two deadly crashes in four days had to mean something. Surely my fears were concretely justified. But they still aren't. Two crashes, even in one day, doesn't really count for anything. Statistically speaking, I reckon I'd have to spend many months on the backs of motorcycles scouting around for truck crashes before I could be confident about anything.

It all does make me wonder how much more likely statisticians are to die in violent crashes. Someone should do a paper on that. I'm obviously not very good at statistics, so I'd probably stuff it up.

Libby and I spent four hours yesterday at the biggest Paddy's Market in the world. Friendship at breaking point. Although I did buy a lot of nice lamps.

Our train trip last night was the funnest. It was third class, which only had seats but wasn't actually that bad. But it means that people make friends with you because they think you must be hardcore. We were offered food and drink and lovely smelling face wipes all night long. We met a nice group of two girls and a fellow early on and they gave us a rather substantial dinner.

Throughout the night they gave us many lollies, pickled mango, face wipes, mandarins, cold water, sticky rice with beef and curried egg and sweet milky wafer biscuits. Libby suggested I date (with view to marrying) the pretty, young one but we all got tired and fell asleep before I could take her aside for a serious talk (the girl, not Libby).

We offered them some our suddenly embarassing snackables but they politely declined all of them except the orange drinking yoghurt. I'm not sure if they actually liked orange drinking yoghurt or if they simply felt that they refused us more times than was friendly. Having now drunk my first orange drinking yoghurt I'm going to have to assume they were just being gracious.

We also consumed rather a lot of our own snacks. Although Libby managed to scoff the finest treats while I was snoozing, including the remains of the roast almonds which she had so innocently suggested we save until later.

Amidst the feasting I started reading The Beautiful and the Damned by Fitzgerald. I suspect reading this book will be the single best thing I have ever done for my friendship with Libby.

Sleeping was a fairly awkward matter, me being rather too tall for the seats. I ended up following the lead of our friend and sleeping on the floor underneath the seats. He had troubles because his tummy was too large to slide under the seats. I had troubles because I was sufficiently tall that my feet or head would jut out into the next group's cabin. It was as dirty and claustrophobic as you fancy, but mercifully comfortable after sleeping on the seat. I discovered in the morning that the padding I had been using to save my hips was actually a small piece of beef Libby had dropped under the chair the previous night.

I was also worried that someone would tread on my during the night with so many bits sticking out from under the seats. Luckily we were sharing our area with a light-footed grandmother who hopped about without ever touching the ground. When, ready for a shiny new day, I woke up at 3am she offered me an apple. She proceeded to cut and peel it, segment by segment until I'd eaten half. When Libby woke up a little later, she got the other half. She was the best.

Libby and I are sitting for the day in Nong Khai. It's a hot little town in Thailand just south of Vientiane.

At the border, we crossed paths with an efficient-looking Canadian biker tourist. He ended up well in front of us during the usual passport/visa/departure-card shenanigans but as we walked out the other side we saw him walking assertively back towards us with a can of Pepsi in his hand. He smiled at us and said that Thai Pepsi did not taste as good as Lao Pepsi. Abandoning your plans to travel through Thailand for that sort of reason might seem a little drastic, but I can think of several friends who probably understand the same sort of sentiment if not the precise complaint.

We have mostly hidden out from the heat in this nice internet/ice-cream cafe. It's about 35 cents per hour which is damn cheap. Libby especially has utilitised its excellent ice cream facilities to the full. We interrupted our internet revelries to commence a bold search for pad thai which sadly ended at a grill bar run by an Australian fellow where we had a pizza.

We ate some pre-lunch snack vegetables and rice at a little street stall. The woman was a little shocked when I realised that my hard-won knowledge of Lao counting was transferable to Thailand. I probably repeated sii-sip-haa baht to her a little loudly and enthusiastically. I'm worried she just assumed that I thought that 45 baht for pre-lunch snacks was such an unbelievable bargain that I had to yell ou the price. It is a pretty good bargain, but when bargain hunting amongst people with a fraction of my income I generally try to be more discrete.

I have also drunk a fair bit of beer. Nice beer, but not Lao beer. Beer Lao vanished the moment we crossed the border. I fear that my short-lived love affair is over.

We're also about to head off on a 12 hour train journey half way across the country. What's even more fun is that we're in third-class. Hurray. Twelve hours of sweaty pain for the price of a Sydney beer.

There was a fellow in the guest house this morning. He asked the guest house manager how to get to the border with Thailand. I'd just come from there, so I started to tell him how he could do it. He interrupted me and this conversation followed.

Man: Is that the market? I'm not going there. They'll try to rip me off.
Me: They're pretty nice. It wasn't expensive for me.
Man: They'll try to charge me 150,000 kip ($15).
Me: It's only 15,000 kip.
Man: No thanks. I'm not a walking ATM.

The conversation didn't even entirely make sense to me. I had thought we were just have a casual chat and then half way through I realised he was really angry at something (poor people I suppose). I'm not sure why he even asked the man in the first place. It's kind of like he has decided to boycott buying things to ensure he never gets ripped off.

People in Laos are way too friendly. I am well drunk on gifted Lao alcohol.

Beer Lao is very good. Whiskey Lao is not so good.

Beer in Cambodia is the same price as Coke. But unlike Coke, I don't get sick of beer. So I end up drinking beer just because I'm thirsty. It's only 50 cents for a can of good cold Cambodian beer and it's the same for Asahi. Asahi is super fancy in Australia and I can't afford to drink it. Here I you could pour it down your shirt to keep cool.

Last time I went travelling I didn't like beer so it wasn't a big deal. Then I learnt to like it. This time it is a big deal. I finally understand what Ian was talking about all that time.

Libby and I have split up for a few days. I'm going to Preah Vihear and she is going to Ban Lung. We're going to cross the border in different places and meet up in Pakse which is in the south of Laos.

I'm going to catch some sort of taxi to some Tbeng Meanchey tomorrow. Apparently the trip costs between $3 and $160. I've agreed to pay $5 so I figure I'm pretty far up the good (for me) end of the scale. I almost arranged to pay $90 last night but thought better of it at the last minute.

After that I'll hire a motorbike to investigate some old temples on some old mountain tops. Then on to Thailand for a quick train trip to the Laos border. I'm meeting Libby on the 14th February so I'll have to be quick.

Kompong Thom is a really cool town. I had my best ever fried rice for lunch. So vegetabley and giant. They also gave me some delicious iced tea completely for free. Libby and I have been eating and drinking a lot of ice despite guide book exhortations not to. So far we haven't been sick at all. Except when we ate at Kiwi Bakery and Libby got sick. But we think that might have been to quantity rather than quality. For indeed the quality was most excellent.

My hotel is only $5 a night. It has towels and toilet paper. And a fan. And 32 television channels some of which are in English. Namely AXN, Cinemax, National Geographic and Cartoon Network. You may be wondering why I am wasting precious Cambodian travel time sitting in this internet coffee blogging when I could be watching Cartoon Network. A fair question it would be too. After finishing this and a quick beer by Kompong Thom's beautiful river I'll be off for some Tom and Jerry.

We're sitting in the boarding lounge waiting to go to Bangkok. There was a news report on the television with the headline Bangkok Airport Woes: Officials claim that runways must be closed to repair cracks.

Sorry mum.

I've been very diligent about budgeting for Cambodia. After working out all my expenses and the income I'll get from Centrelink while I'm over there, I will have $6 left when I get home.

Cambodia Gear, originally uploaded by Nutloaf.

I've been having a competition with myself this trip around to see how small I could make me backpack. I found Onebag.com and it has a really good minimalist sort of travel gear list.

So I'm going to take this and see if I die or get anotherwise annoyed by its size. I'll let everyone know if it works.

A lot of the credit for the smallness has to go to my delightful little sleeping bag which weighs 800gms. Lovely.

You quickly get used to Australian soldiers lined up at the supermarket checkout with their rifles and it begins to seem normal. You just get accustomed to the APC's rumbling up and down the streets day and night with helicopters zig zagging above.

Dutch Pickle

East Timor seems like it would be a really fun place to go. But maybe I'll go there another time by myself rather than trying to persuade Libby.

Does anyone want to go on a West Timor field trip with Opportunity International at the end of August? I've never been to West Timor before.

Is lovely. Actually, I'm not going to summarise the places I go to. I don't want a chronological graph of personal growth and wowness. But I'm not sure how to avoid it. Not without abandoning a journal altogether. Maybe there's something inherently, dodgily, voyeuristic about documenting places you only see for a few days. It's insulting. Maybe the only solution is to make sure you stay everywhere you want to write about for more than a little while. Yes, I think so. And it wouldn't be so bad either.