Chopstick, i'm not AN. I think he posts on here under his own name.

Pig4bill's comment just made me smile 'cos a know Africa a bit, and you guys are miles away from each other! Was early dude, hadn't had my coffee.

Great thread BTW love it, no offence meant pig4bill.

Chop,

Have you been to Cambodia? Any tips for travelling there?

I'm not Chop, but I think there's both a Cambodia thread at the 2p2 travel forums and a blog (headline was something like "Broke brothers living and partying in cambodia") that I found helpful when I was planning my trip a couple of years ago.

I don't really have much to contribute except that it's an awesome country and the people are super super friendly and helpful.

Ok ty, I'll go check it out. I've heard the people are pretty great. I'm not quite sure how long to plan on travelling there?

Rexx,
It probably depends on how big of a thing you have for ladyboys.

p4b - different scams, just the usual stuff, will write up soon. That's an African "soon" so don't hold your breath.

Rexx - never been, was going to do the TVCL route but ended up only going to T&V and staying twice as long in those two.



Shameless repost from FB below because I'm lazy and feel bad about not updating recently even tho it is 100% the fault of lolAfrican internets. Photos to come later, but got some solid complaining & lolAmericaning in to tide you over until then.


--

Took the ferry from Nkhata Bay down most of Lake Malawi to Monkey Bay. Arrived at 05:00 for an 07:00 departure. Ferry ended up leaving at 16:45. Still made it in only a few hours late (just after sunset the next day) despite the departure delay. This was on the replacement vessel as the primary was out of service for repairs. Much newer vessel but also much less room.

Had bought a seat in first class the day before which as usual had a squatter in it who initially refused to move. A different squatter was demanding money to exit his seat. Eventually it all got sorted without the need to involve the ferry staff but I'm definitely getting tired of this kind of thing. I know it will be much worse further north.

It's interesting how spoiled I am as an American when it comes to this kind of interaction. People do this kind of thing in the USA, but they also almost always instantly give up the seat when you call them out on what they are doing. In the USA, I have no problem with becoming aggressive and doing things like taking out my phone to start recording someone who does something like this, but in other countries that kind of approach can be anywhere from socially unacceptable to completely illegal, so I usually employ shaming strategies instead when the initial face-saving false confusion strategies inevitability fail.

It does still irritate me a little to have to start with the face-saving stuff first, given everyone knows exactly what is going on and the squatter does not deserve to save any face in the first place. That's mostly just my American sense of fairness coming into play. It shouldn't, because it is completely irrelevant here.

I prefer the Chinese approach where everyone just shoves past each other and are super rude about it because at least they aren't pretending they are in the right.

On an even further tangent in a semi-opposite direction, I absolutely love interacting with the touts and hustlers here because there are few things I enjoy more than wasting the time of a person who pretends to be friendly for the sole purpose of trying to scam me. This is both because I enjoy preventing them from scamming someone else while they engage me as well as just costing them time and effort for zero return. I've definitely got the "unsure/undecided tourist" act down cold at this point, as well as the "that price is almost low enough but not quite" and the "I kind of want to buy it but I'm not sure". Also now quite good at pretending to respond with genuine interest to the "I am local artist" scam from dudes trying to pass off factory-produced Chinese garbage as "from my village".

I feel absolutely zero guilt with using these strategies due to the scamming intent behind the approaches. This is not entirely fair of me, as some of the approaches are just things like ridiculously high quoted prices which are not perceived as scams here, but more just part of the negotiation process. It's absolutely an American filter that causes me to view that specific approach as scamming. I recognize this and am OK keeping that filter in place despite being pretty far from the USA. Call it a individual-level cultural imperialisming but I look at it as evangelizing a less douchey approach to micro trade. Definitely not When In Romeing with that line, tho.

That's a lot of words so here are some photos from the ferry ride.

Ha, reminds me of TIA from Blood Diamond.

The last photos were from after arriving back in Windhoek from the Namibia/Botswana loop and saying adios to the Canadian. After 3 straight weeks of sleeping in a tent, I was looking forward to chilling in an actual room with wifi and running water and everything. Even better, there was a grocery store across the street with a hot foods counter, so I was able to spend my time catching up with the real world while demolishing half chicken & chips each day.

Also was able to send off some mail, as Namibia has pretty reasonable international postage rates. Sent myself an assortment of coins from the countries I'd been to so far:



as well as some of the banknotes. I prefer banknotes as souvenirs because they are super lightweight and take up no space. Very easy to mail back at intervals with little cost. Also a unique souvenir to the given country. Coins are obviously far heavier, but I can't say no to some sweet animal coins!

Those are all taped down to the interior side of a 1L cardboard juice box. You gotta package them up well because mailing currency (inc coins) is usually illegal and they will get confiscated if detected.


After some time communing with the real world, it was time to move on. There is a southern African regional bus called the Intercape which goes as far north as Malawi between most of the major cities. This one was an overnight from Windhoek, Namibia to Livingstone, Zambia:




and I was pleasantly surprised to find that it had USB outlets above each seat! How lucky:





So it was easy to pass the time (24 hour bus ride!) with my phone, mostly playing Polytopia. Don't google that, you will waste countless hours on it. It's a game that is a dumbed down version of Civ, and the games only take like 10 minutes to play. Highly addictive. You've been warned.

Was also even more lucky in that I didn't have a seatmate until over halfway into the trip.

After leaving in the late afternoon, we made it into Zambia early the next morning:




but passing border control took hours. They do an infrared temperature scan to see if you are sick, after which you get a small "cleared" slip that you then have to take over to the police to show you aren't going to make anyone sick, then you can get your visa. The lines were effectively non-existent and things were pretty chaotic. Eventually we all got sorted, along with everyone else, and continued on into Zambia, tho.

Like most places in southern Africa, there is a lot of poverty in Zambia. Here's someone's house with people chillin outside:




On the plus side, that one isn't made of garbage bags, which I saw more than a few of in South Africa.

Livingstone was pretty sweet. In what is becoming a pattern, I ended up staying there longer than expected. It's a small town in Zambia right next to Victoria Falls (with a sister town on the other side of the border in Zimbabwe which is confusingly named Victoria Falls, the same as the actual falls), with a few grocery stores:




some curio stalls:




and a small assortment of restaurants:




yeah, of course I had the crocodile pizza:

There's a pretty sweet bicycle tour that some locals offer which takes you outside of Livingstone and to some of the surrounding villages. It's a great way to see how the locals actually live, since Livingstone itself is somewhat touristy. Usually the locals live in the village and walk/ride into L to work. The villages have dirt roads and houses ranging from literal stick huts to ones made of concrete blocks. There are kids all over the place:




There's also a quarry there. This woman breaks rocks by hand from dawn until dusk:




she's 82 years old and has been doing that "since she was young". Really puts things in perspective for how lucky some of us are to live such comparatively insanely easier lives.

The markets are fun to visit:




with some interesting stuff, including caterpillars:



which are an important and easy renewable source of protein.

There is a common garment called a chitenge in Zambia, which is also popular in other African countries as well as in the South Pacific. You probably know it as a sarong if you are a USA#1er. Lots of chitenge stalls in the market:




tho sadly most of them are no longer made in Zambia, but rather imported from other countries with big wax print factories. Even as far as India.

Here's a look at the main strip of one of the markets:




which was close to where a couple of stalls were selling jars of peanut butter:




which was being made and bottled right there in the stall:




that thing was really loud. Watching the peanut butter come out was kinda gross, not gonna lie. It just kind of blubbed its way out of some small holes in the bottom of that can down the chute into the jar.

blub.

blub.

blub blub.

blub.

Peanut butter was not on my menu. Instead, I had a lot of nshima, which is the staple food in Zambia. Most Zambians eat it 2-3 times a day:




it's basically maize in mashed potato form if that makes sense. Super cheap (K2.60 is about $0.25 USD) and filling.

Good thing it was cheap, since right after the ATM told me this:




it then decided to also tell me this:




ruh roh raggy.

Fortunately the ATMs in Livingstone aren't set up to auto-shred, so I was able to come back to the bank the next day and get my card after they removed it from the machine. Dude had an enormous stack of cards so I guess it's pretty common. He was not happy that my card wasn't signed, and made me sign a document multiple times when he was further not happy with how my signature didn't really match the one on my passport per his advanced handwriting analysis skills. Eventually he did give me my card after I showed him a wallet full of other stuff that all had my name on it.

With my card back, I was able to get some of that deliciously colorful Zambia kwacha:



and yes, that's a porcupine on the K10 note! I made sure to get a couple extra of those as a sweet little giveaway gift.

Did have to spend a leopard (or is it a cheetah, hmm) and a couple of lions to get me some more of that tasty nshima:



and what they call "village chicken". There is no country chicken or big city chicken, and yes, I did ask.

Speaking of currency...



yeah I locked up a bunch of the old school Zim notes while there. Top tier souvenirs imo. They usually run about $1 USD each, but it's not too tough to negotiate that down to around half or less for the ones that people aren't as interested in. Some of the dudes selling them will ask for some truly outrageous prices, tho. One guy asked for the equivalent of $85 USD for a single note. I just laughed at him. He swore up and down that is what they sell for, and watched me go to the very next stall and buy a dozen of the exact same note for $10. I waved them at him as I walked away.

While the wifi wasn't great there, the hotel I stayed at was only about $33/night and was smack dab in the middle of town. No mosquito net over the bed:




but it wasn't necessary as I didn't see a single one despite it being rainy season.

It was pretty simple to walk everywhere as Livingstone is fairly small. Almost everything is within a 20 minute walk, except the Falls. Took a shared taxi from the taxi stand:



for those visits.

At some areas of the Falls you need to sign a little book:




so 2p2 is representing in Zambia now.

The Falls themselves were spectacular. I'd wanted to see them (along with the Great Barrier Reef & Milford Sound) pretty much my entire life. It was sweet to finally be there in person. Normally I skip the photos of stuff you guys can easily see on GIS, but in this case I'm going to spam you a bit:



that's a view from the Zambian side. You get absolutely soaked walking across that bridge.

You take another much larger bridge at the border crossing to walk into Zimbabwe:




where the spray is even more powerful, the the point of obscuring the entire Falls at some areas:




but the areas that are more clear are impressive:




and not just for the perma-rainbows that never go away.

As this is lolZimbabwe, there are not any guard rails or anything like that:



so if you feel like punching out in style one day, you can pretty easily leap to your death there if you're so inclined. Or even if you're not, as the rocks are permanently slippery.

The water flow was too high to go to Devil's Pool, but most everyone I spoke with who had done it said it's super overrated and you don't see much anyway due to the structure of the Falls.

This was a nice one to check off the bucket list. Literally had been wanting to go there for decades. I vividly remember sitting in my office in DC years ago daydreaming about going to Vic Falls, was kind of surreal to actually be there. #yolo!

Glad to hear you made it to the falls. It's one of the things I've come across that really is worth it to see in real life.

When I was there, some people were ignoring the railings and out on those super slippery rocks right on the edge on the Zim side. Hope they got back ok.

Didn't do the bungee from the international bridge?

Lemme guess - tastes like chicken?

golddog - no bungee for me. I generally skip doing stuff that I could do anywhere, and bungee falls in that category. Considered an ultralight right but after watching a few vids on youtube decided not to bother because you don't get very close.

p4b - pretty much. Softer texture of course. Unsurprisingly pretty much the same as alligator.

There were a lot fewer animals in the Vic Falls area, and mostly it was just baboons, but I did enjoy this fellow just chillin:




he just kind of looked as me as I walked by, and continued surveying. Meanwhile, the baboons had found where a truck carrying sugar had spilled some of its load while stopped at the border, and they were literally licking the ground to gobble up what was available:



note border guard in background with his AK-47 or whatever that is.

Speaking of the border, how sweet is this as a welcome to a new country:




looooool

It could. It could, indeed.


While I don't have a sweet fence perch of my own, one thing that I enjoy surveying is fast food. Both USA#1 chains that customize their menus to include regional items, as well as non-USA#1 chains that don't exist in USA#1. Here's a look at part of the KFC menu in Vic Falls:



Sadza is the name for the maize mash that the Zambians call nshima and the South Africans call pap. They are all slightly different, but mostly just some kind of mashed potatoes made of maize.

I am nothing if not streetwise, so..



they were pretty tasteless.

While in Livingstone / Vic Falls, I got around via shared taxi, which is super common. Already posted a photo of the taxi stand, here's what it looks like inside:



totally got got with the middle seat there. The drivers are far more polite than in USA#1, and you can't beat the cost. A private taxi from Livingstone to the Zim/Zam border where Vic Falls is located is about 80-100 ZKW aka $8-10 USD. The shared taxi is like 15 ZKW. And they are much more likely to keep the Zambian music on instead of immediately switching to a mzungu radio station.

There are some interesting markets where the locals go, maybe 20-30 minute walk outside of the tourist area:






and one of the other neat things is that many of the advertisements on the buildings are hand-painted:



so there are some solid photo ops available if you aren't afraid to go a little off the tourist path.

Of course, a man's gotta know his limitations:



and while I trust my typhoid vaccine, I never got around to taking the one for cholera.

One of the tilting things about the place I stayed, which is also common across lots of southern Africa, is that the wifi was coded prepay for specific amounts of data and/or time. That led to accumulating lots and lots of these:



and constantly having to log in again and again using a different ui/pw each time. I prefer when they do this with data (here in Malawi it's usually 500MB for about $2.50 USD) because I'm not a heavy data user and 500MB lasts me a long time. When they do it based on time (usually a 24hr period) it's super annoying because you have to constantly get new credentials and if you have more than one device it's twice the hassle.

Not as much of a hassle as how much I was hassled each and every day walking past the curio market, tho. These guys pretty much never give up and you gotta give them kudos for the hustle:



but it does start to wear on you.

I did buy a couple of very small carvings:



to mail back to USA#1, and after day 8 or so they eventually toned down the sales pitches when they finally realized I wasn't going to buy anything else, but that stall is in a row of about 40 stalls, and of course everyone wants you to stop at their stall as you walk by. They also make up their own names to introduce themselves with, which can be pretty great as they love American pop culture. That dude on the left told me his name was Lennox Lewis. The guy on the right settled for a much more boring "Jason" which he eventually confided to me in hushed tones was "just my business name"

Spoke with both of them daily for two weeks, and also helped Jason dramatically improve his product presentation in his stall, which is the one pictured above. Gave him a very hard time for the blank wall on the left and not using the space for display. His response was basically "but I am lazy" loooooool

Jason constantly asked me for 5 kwacha "for the bread" which is a pretty common justification in Zambia. I offered to buy him bread in response and he always declined. He also wanted to trade for a roll of tape I was carrying around, but we had markedly dissimilar valuation methodologies.

As with anywhere, eventually it was time to move on. Decided to skip the bus this time in favor of an overnight train from Vic Falls to Bulawayo, Zimbabwe:




the train was a pretty standard passenger train similar to the ones I had taken across eastern Europe and Asia:




and I had a two person compartment all to myself after paying for two tickets:




that metal thing is a fold out sink which obv did not work:




and has not worked in who knows how long. The cabinet with the mirror had been screwed shut. Was tempted to use my screwdriver but decided it was probably best not to know.

The door had a little chain lock which was comforting:



and the window opened for lots of fresh air. The cushions were absolutely filthy, no matter how many times I wiped them down with travel wipes. Good thing I have a sleeping bag. The electricity went out about 10 minutes after departing Vic Falls and never came back on despite flickering on and off a few times during the night.

The view was mostly what you'd expect, lots of grasslands and small villages. Every so often the train would stop and we'd pick up some passengers as well as have people walk along the windows selling grilled corn on sticks and little snacks:




I was taking a little vid of the countryside when the chick in the cabin directly ahead of mine stuck her head out the window and started wagging her tongue at me:




in addition to some hand gestures and additional tongue movements that were not exactly family friendly. That's a still from the vid. A few minutes later she stuck her head back out and handed me these:



along with a comically exaggerated "shhh" finger over closed lips, probably due to her male companion being in the same cabin with her.

Great updates Chop. Thanks, as always, for your ongoing TR.

Yeah, great batch of updates!

Not sure what happened there but there are none.

SPAR is one of the major Austrian supermarket chains. I had no idea about their international (franchise-) endeavors up until now lol.

How do you discern what's "safe" (for USA person) to eat/drink? I remember you mentioning look at the seal on the bottled water, but what about food?

Just find stuff to try, and roll with it if you get ill? Had much in the way of problems due to food/drink issues?

Verified, AK.

I guess it's too risky to bring in your own porn, so you had to download it while there?

Chop is definitely not the average American, considering his adventures the last few years. What would kill me probably wouldn't even give him a tummy ache.