ENTRIES FROM THE GLOBAL TRIP BLOG CHRONICLES
The Two Backpacks
From the trip blog: "The Global Trip 2004: Sixteen Months Around The World"
Posted January 30, 2005
DAY 465: It was advised by numerous parties to travel overland from Bangkok, Thailand to Siem Reap, Cambodia with a transport service set up by a tour agency, in order to ease the transition at the border crossing. What I did not hear until after the fact that it was probably best to go via boat, but alas, the road trip that was supposed to be twelve hours ended up being close to twenty.
Red Pills, White Apples, and Blue Pumpkins
From the trip blog: "The Global Trip 2004: Sixteen Months Around The World"
Posted January 30, 2005
DAY 466: “I’m not going to be much fun tomorrow,” Noelle said the night before when we checked into the New Millennium guesthouse in Siem Reap at 2:30 a.m. after a long grueling journey from Bangkok.
The Smiles Of Angkor
From the trip blog: "The Global Trip 2004: Sixteen Months Around The World"
Posted February 02, 2005
DAY 467: “Are you just as awe-inspired as I am?” Noelle asked me as we stood in front of the Bayon, one of Angkor Park’s major temples. Her smile was wide with joy, even in the scorching hot and humid conditions of tropical Cambodia.
“Yeah, this pretty much kicks the pyramids’ ass,” was my response.
Where Life Imitates Video Games
From the trip blog: "The Global Trip 2004: Sixteen Months Around The World"
Posted February 02, 2005
DAY 468: “It looks like a movie set,” I overheard one British girl saying to her friends.
“It is a movie set,” her companion replied.
The raîson d’être in the former French-occupied Cambodia is Angkor Wat, the UNESCO World Heritage Site known the world over. The ancient grand Hindu temple is one of the world’s great wonders, so great that it was used as a location for the 2001 Hollywood blockbuster Lara Croft Tomb Raider (starring the beautiful bosomy, full-lipped Angelina Jolie), which as everyone knows (or should know) was based on a wildly popular adventure video game of the same name, which featured a bosomy, full-lipped virtual character named Lara Croft.
The Ex-Pat Zone
From the trip blog: "The Global Trip 2004: Sixteen Months Around The World"
Posted February 07, 2005
DAY 469: To make up time and to keep ourselves from being oversaturated with temples, Noelle and I decided like many backpackers before us, to skip out on the third day of our three-day Angkor Park pass — it costs the same as two one-day passes anyway. With that said, you’d think we would have slept in, but no, we were up at “stupid o’clock” again, at 5:30 to get to our boat to Phnom Penh, Cambodia’s capital city. We had heard that taking the cheaper bus option would involve another unpaved road — which might have led to another potential murder like that one time — so we splurged on the $23 fast ferry which would take us along the Tonle Sap river and lake system.
“The Trinidad Show” Live
From the trip blog: "The Global Trip 2004: Sixteen Months Around The World"
Posted February 07, 2005
DAY 470: It’s one thing to experience my life on the road via this Blog, but it’s another to experience it live, as it happens, as Noelle did that day. Since her first appearance on “The Trinidad Show,” she saw things in person that she had only read about on-line, like that blue clamp that holds the logic board of my laptop together tightly. “Ah, the famous clamp,” she said when she first saw it.
Ouch Was An Understatement
From the trip blog: "The Global Trip 2004: Sixteen Months Around The World"
Posted February 07, 2005
DAY 471: “Okay, make us cry,” I said to our tuk-tuk driver after negotiating a day rate for Noelle and me. We instructed him to take us to the darker side of Phnom Penh, the sites where the helpless cries of innocents were silenced, where people were tortured and killed by a ruthless, inhumane dictator — and within our lifetimes.
Staring Out The Window
From the trip blog: "The Global Trip 2004: Sixteen Months Around The World"
Posted February 08, 2005
DAY 472 (one week since last Thailand entry): “I think that one of my favorite things is staring out the window,” I said, staring out the window of a bus from Phnom Penh to the Cambodian port town of Sihanoukville. Sihanoukville was just one stop on a long two-day overland journey back to Bangkok that we managed to do in one long 18-hour day.
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ABOUT ERIK R. TRINIDAD
When he’s not making a living as an interactive/motion designer or playing with fast food, Erik R. Trinidad is a travel writer, blogger, video host and producer focusing on adventure and culinary content. His work has been featured on National Geographic Intelligent Travel, Adventure.com, Discovery.com, Saveur, Condé Nast Traveler, and 
Hyenas Laughed at Me and Now I Know Why, which also includes the work of Tim Cahill, Doug Lansky, Jennifer Leo and Rolf Potts. He has also referenced his travel experiences in his solo book, Fancy Fast Food: Ironic Recipes with No Bun Intended.
For over ten years, Erik has traveled to the seven continents of the world — from Timbuktu to Kalamazoo — with a curiosity for exotic foods and a thirst for adventure (and writing material). In his travels, he has been mugged at knifepoint in Cape Town, extorted by corrupt Russian police on the Trans-Siberian Railway, stranded in tornadic storms in the American midwest, and air-lifted off the Everest Trail by a helicopter that was thankfully paid for by his travel insurance. But it hasn’t been all fun; he has also donned a tuxedo amidst the penguins of Antarctica, paraded with Carnival-winning samba school Beija Flor in Rio, run for his life at Pamplona’s “Running of the Bulls,” cage-dived with great white sharks, gotten shot point-blank in the stomach in Colombia (while wearing a bulletproof jacket), and above all, encountered many people around the world, including some Peruvian musicians in Cuzco who learned and played “Y.M.C.A.” at his request. He loves the irony that, after everywhere he’s been, he has never been to Mexico.
Erik writes stories and news articles when he’s at his base camp in New York City, and continues his blog when he is on the road — provided he’s not occupied tracking down lost luggage.
Additional news/article clippings at ErikTrinidad.com.
See Erik talk about travel in an American Express ad:
Read about Erik in this feature article from Filipinas magazine by National Geographic Traveler Associate Editor Amy Alipio.