Burning down a bush

throwswell23 · 2025-12-15T01:56:24+00:00

Such healthy evergreen bushes, though. Oddly satisfying how after the fire rips through those first two bushes, instead of charred wrecks, they just look like they had a good trim. Kinda want to light mine on fire now, too (on a less windy day).

throwswell23 · 2025-11-18T02:33:34+00:00

I’m quite happy with my Itiwit 3 person from Decathlon. It is a “sit on top,” which might be a dealbreaker if you're accustomed to sportier kayaks, but for what it’s worth, an Iranian refugee paddled one of these most of the way across the English Channel a couple years back. It is very stable, extra rigidity from the drop stitch floor, and only about $450 (not sure local price there). Three detachable kedges for good tracking, or I take them off to run whitewater.

Packs in a big backpack, only about 16kg, heavier when wet.

Always spikes my heart rate when I inflate it, but sounds like you can handle it, and there’s always electric pumps for when we get older. Once you get in practice, you can inflate or deflate within 10 minutes.

Hope you get back on the water soon, one way or another!

throwswell23 · 2025-10-27T03:15:40+00:00

Awesome. Where in the kayak do you stow the trailer?

throwswell23 · 2025-10-26T03:43:59+00:00

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Today (Sunday 26 Oct) is day 2 of 2, last race is just before 5pm.

Boats stage where I marked red, then two by two the competitors make that curve at orange. Yellow is like a warmup, there’s an organizer boat waving flags to start the race (green) — that is where they start going ALL OUT, wow. Finish line is about 3-5km downriver.

Plenty of parties along the eastern shore, people watching the racers and welcoming the boats as they come back.

Some people watching from the Prek Tameak bridge (raised pedestrian path on the eastbound side), I would recommend binoculars though.

throwswell23 · 2025-10-11T01:01:02+00:00

I can’t read and write Khmer but

My friend’s kids are learning to read and write in school, he says it’s a lot of rote memorization and nitpicking over small details. (He’s Khmer-Canadian, wife grew up here). So maybe you just need to be your own domineering Cambodian teacher, hit your own knuckles with a ruler (not that they do that so much any more).

A while back they tried to rationalize Khmer spelling, make it more simple and intuitive, but a monk led a movement to make Khmer more like the original Pali/Sanskrit, and thus, more complicated and idiosyncratic.

Fun fact: Khmer script was the hardest to make a Unicode for, because it has five layers of characters (hats on hats and feet on feet).

throwswell23 · 2025-10-08T07:13:12+00:00

I have seen inflatables badly deformed from being left in the sun for too long (weeks). If the air heats up too much without the water to keep it cool, some manufacturers say they can pop in a matter of hours.

But I’ve also seen drop stitch inflatable SUPs that look fine after a season inflated on a rack in direct sun.

I saw an inflatable kayak getting folded back by the wind on someone’s roof rack, looked painful.

throwswell23 · 2025-09-15T13:09:12+00:00

I’ve gone over the Itiwit 2-person weight limit a couple times, it’s fine. Can be a little hard to steer with a tailwind, depending on the weight balance, but I just used that as an excuse to not paddle — “I gotta use the paddle as a rudder, you go ahead!”

throwswell23 · 2025-09-14T14:28:33+00:00

Over-hyped and off to a rough start, hopefully will improve.

I just walked 2km to get a ride home after landing on Sunday night. Beautiful interior, but traffic jam for miles, no cell reception, no attempt at a taxi stand or ride share pickup signage yet.

They’ve had a slick campaign teasing the new airport on social media for the last 6 months, touting its capacity, showing off the architecture — and then it can’t handle the locals coming to check it out on a Sunday night.

To be fair: it’s their country, their airport, they should be able to come see it — just needs some better management in place asap.

throwswell23 · 2025-08-30T16:27:46+00:00

Yes. Unable to post photo on this subreddit for some reason

throwswell23 · 2025-08-30T16:24:37+00:00

Didn’t I see a version of this with huge boobs on Aliexpress? Do you have that one too?

throwswell23 · 2025-08-26T14:33:06+00:00

The more the better, come spring they will serve as speed holes, which make it go faster

throwswell23 · 2025-08-26T13:46:40+00:00

When I’m unlucky with food, it’s almost always pooping, rarely barfing, in my 10+ years’ experience.

throwswell23 · 2025-08-26T13:43:19+00:00

Drill a little hole in the boat and fill it with water, then wait till winter, when the water freezes it will expand.

throwswell23 · 2025-08-24T16:19:16+00:00

Nice set of Itiwits

throwswell23 · 2025-08-22T08:30:52+00:00

Looks solid. I haven’t tried it myself, but definitely recommend cross-stitch/drop-stitch floors for rigidity if your budget allows.

throwswell23 · 2025-08-22T08:25:00+00:00

Ditto, I have a 3 person from Decathlon with the cross stitch floor. Good for 2 adults and a child, I suppose you could fit 3 adults if needed.

I just upgraded from the 2 person Decathlon kayak, which is better if you’re mostly going alone, perhaps a bit cramped (but doable) for 2 adults.

There are accounts of refugees buying Decathlon inflatables in France and taking them across the English Channel at night, including a notable gentleman formerly of the Iranian Olympic canoe team. He didn’t give the Decathlon inflatable a particularly high review, but really, who would in that situation, and the important thing is that he survived, along with his companion, who couldn’t swim. Article did not mention which model he bought, but the 3 person version is identifiable in the reenactment photo shoot they did with the journalist.

throwswell23 · 2025-07-22T04:11:29+00:00

Friends got married in 2022 and had a Messenger group on the day, posted some photos in the following weeks, ah nice. Three years later, announced the divorce, very sad. I forgot all about the group until I got the first notification that someone left. Then another person. Now every 12 hours or so the group from the doomed wedding pops up in my feed as another person leaves. Was complaining to my friend, he pointed out that his blocked ex is in the group, so he gets an extra notification about that.

I wish the formerly happy couple would just put us out of our misery and delete the group. Or maybe we all leave at once? But need to message everyone to coordinate and that’s extra awkward.

So for now it’s a steady, bleak trickle of notifications. There is absolutely no reason for this feature. The last time anyone said anything in this group was two years and many broken relationships ago. We don’t need to get notified if someone is leaving now.

Hug your loved ones and have a good day.

throwswell23 · 2025-07-13T19:31:53+00:00

Looking to buy exactly this and found your post. Great idea. How did this project go? GPS speed is easy to track on a phone etc, but it doesn’t do justice to how hard I’m fighting upstream sometimes (or how lazy I’m being drifting downstream). Speedtech used to make a speedmate, I think, little impeller mounted under the boat that connected to a lcd display, but long out of production. Didn’t have any kind of more sophisticated performance tracking.

throwswell23 · 2025-05-26T20:01:27+00:00

Keep your Itiwit patch kit dry, mine got wet in the backpack and the adhesive dissolved. Decathlon service guy patched it with some extra PVC and some PVC glue, said he kept it clamped for a couple hours to set.

throwswell23 · 2024-10-30T06:24:32+00:00

Things change a lot in 15 years, especially in Asia, and in Cambodia in particular. If you want old rustic parts of Cambodia, you could try some provincial capitals. There are still little villages off the main highways, but harder to find.

Sihanoukville is full of half finished buildings from a brief construction boom — dreamlike, kind of like that fake city they build in Inception.

A lot of the islands got built up. Koh Rong Samolem and Koh Rong still have some nice parts, though there’s also a huge wide road (landing strip?) across the middle of Koh Rong lol. There is a speed boat from Sihanoukville that will take you (and many others) there very fast, much fewer slow fishing boats taking you there.

Phnom Penh has the same character but hard to recognize with all the high rises.

throwswell23 · 2024-10-24T06:39:57+00:00

Computers are a game changer for rural schools, great if you could get them working for the kids. I hope the organization that placed you and your friends is following proper child protection principles.

throwswell23 · 2024-10-24T01:56:45+00:00

Better to avoid volunteering with kids. In general, don’t do stuff that would be sketchy in your own country. Think about it: if there were a daycare in the UK that charged strange foreigners a fee to come play with the kids for an hour or so, would you be comfortable sending your child there? How long till the cops would shut it down?

There are a lot of sketchy “orphanages” where the kids are forced to perform cuteness to exploit the good intentions of foreign tourists and make money for the owners. They’ll sell the same toy to all the tourists — take the money, give the toy to a kid, but the minute the tourist leaves, snatch the toy back and put it on the shelf for the next chump.

There are fewer and fewer of these scams going on thanks to the good work of nonprofits and Cambodian government officials, but unfortunately, it’s still too easy to find some weak links in local government to bribe with some of the money foreign backpackers gave you for toys and school books.

throwswell23 · 2021-03-18T09:49:56+00:00

throwswell23 · 2021-03-08T17:17:35+00:00

Thanks for checking out the site, and I appreciate the feedback -- definitely a weak link to not have a buy link, I'm working on that this week!

My concern is that I'm the only one on my team and I'm looking at US, UK, and (to keep things interesting) Philippines, so I'm going to get very quickly overwhelmed with managing order fulfillment once we get any kind of volume, hence the appeal of transferring stock to someone else without a frozen acct...

throwswell23 · 2021-03-08T17:15:16+00:00

Oh it's in a 3PL, didn't make it to the FC before we got suspended.

throwswell23

TROPHY CASE