I've been saying it all along: investigate the brokers. Well now it's finally happening and it is horrendous. It may or may not be criminal but it is definitely wrong on many levels.

CBC finally posted a story on the agents/brokers and their involvement in the dealings. The only numbers you need to concern yourself with are these:

"...in the past two years of the $525 million put up by potential immigrants, businesses received $120 million for investment, while the intermediaries earned $144 million."

Yes, that's right. The middle man took more money in the end than the actual businesses that received the investment. Oh, and there were only seven. 20.5 million is a nice chunk of change.

To nip the "they provided a valuable service" argument in the bud let us look at what they did.:

• They found the investor. There wasn't a shortage of them. From what I understood there were thousands upon thousands wanting in and had the money. They did manage to line up 2000 in a matter of months. I also think there were agents on the ground in Asia looking for them.
• They found the island company. That also wasn't hard. "Hey do you want free money with no strings attached?". In fact I would venture a guess that most companies approached the brokers, not the other way around.
• They facilitated a $1,000 - $5,000 legal process. Creating classes of shares, issuing new shares, etc isn't complex law. They didn't do it either, they just made sure it got done. The lawyers were paid by the companies to do the shuffling.

There is nott 144 million dollars worth of value there. This wasn't good business. It was sloppy government, greedy businesses and greedy brokers. This kind of money and mismanagement deserves a criminal investigation. I guarantee that some brokers were bending and breaking rules to get even more of the hideously large pot.

Robert Ghiz needs to realize it's not about which MLA received 50,000. It's about poor government oversight, greedy businesses, and power brokers that seemingly abused a program and made off with tens of millions of dollars of immigrants money.

The absolute worst part of it is that no one gives a shit because it's not their tax money being wasted. It's "foreign" money. We should be begging for their forgiveness for being such poor stewards of their investments.

Travelling is about seeing things you've never seen before, eating things you've never eaten before, and sometimes it's about meeting people that sometimes you've seen before.

Anyone who has travelled for a few weeks in roughly the same geographic area has had it happen. "Didn't we see those people in the last city we were in?", "Hey isn't that the guy who had that hilarious shirt on in the previous country we were in?". It's weird but it happens. People, like you, are often traveling to the few must-see areas and are following the same guide book's schedule as yours. Sometimes though you meet the person who writes the guidebooks.

While sitting in a massage parlour in Siem Reap, Cambodia, two ladies came in and sat across from me. Instead of the awkward sit and be silent I decided to ask where they were from. They were originally from the Boston area but one was now living in Bangkok and the other, her sister, was living in southern California and was in Asia for the first time visiting. I say something like "Bangkok, nice. We're going to be spending a few days there in a few weeks. Any suggestions on what to do?". As it turns out she wrote the Moon guide to Thailand. We exchanged email addresses and a day later we had a customized itinerary for Bangkok. Awesome.

Today, two countries later and four of five days later, Becky and I rent kayaks and are skirting between the giant limestones cliffs of the Thai coastline in the Krabi province. A snake is clinging to the cliff just a few feet above the water. A fellow kayaker has paused to look at it. We chat for a minute and I ask him where he is from. He's from Boston but has been living in Bangkok for a few years. He points over his shoulder and introduces us to his fiance and her sister in another kayak pulling up. Lo and behold it's the same two girls from the massage parlour in Cambodia.

We look forward to bumping into them in the days to come. We must be doing something right if we keep running into the guide book author of the country we're visiting.

Check out Suzanne's blog. Her travel writing is a must for anyone visiting Thailand and its surrounding areas. All of her reccomondations have been bang on for us.

Apparently if you're "in the know" you call Kuala Lumpur just KL. I'm not in the know.

We arrived in the city around noon after a quick flight from Siem Reap, Cambodia. We're only here for one night as we're in transit to Krabi, Thailand. The city seems nice, from what you can see in an afternoon. Becky and I went up the fourth tallest tower in the world but were rejected (too late in the day) from the Petronas Skywalk.

The "TD" has caught up with some of our travel mates. Imodium and Cipro seem to be the weapons of choice.

If you're ever in Kuala Lumpur a few notes for your consideration: The chicken seems to always come with bone-in. The monks on the street are scammers of a giant magnitude. They were asking for $20-30 to help build their new temple and got very irate when I only offered $2. Maybe they are for real but they need to be less tricky and pushy.

Again, no photos yet as we're traveling light and have no computers.

We're off to Krabi, Thailand in the morning.

We're enjoying the final hours of our last day here in Siem Reap, Cambodia. Wow. What an amazing place. The people are the nicest we've met in our travels and the sights are remarkable. It's also crazy cheap.

We are limited to 15 pound carry-on bags for this leg of the journey so we had to leave the laptops back in Singapore. This note is brought to you from the busted keyboard of our guest house's computer. Internet is reminiscent of 14,400 modem days, but that's only when it is working.

So far we've enjoyed floating villages, the famous temples, and some discount massages. I'll post more as we migrate towards faster Internet. Tomorrow morning we fly to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia for a one night stay before heading to Krabi, Thailand.

We arrived, unscathed, in Singapore a week ago. I apologize for the lack of updates. My new hard drive decided to completely fail while watching Lost flying over the North Pole... Thankfully the resourceful slices back at the Slicedome were able to fetch my most recent backup, put it on a new HD, and get it to me via the Fed Ex protocol. I'm now just getting back up on my digital feet.

I'll be sure to post more photos and updates in the days to come. So far we're blown away by Singapore.

As per our marriage vow we are heading off in a few hours to another new country, Singapore.

It's an extended trip. We're returning home on May 5th. Becky will be teaching in an international School in Singapore to complete her Bachelor of Education. I am going to be working remotely for the man.

It's not all work though. We'll be doing some travelling during the middle of our stay and at the end. Plans include:

• Cambodia (The Angkor Wat)
• Thailand
• Malaysia
• Indonesia (Bali)

We'll keep you up-to-date with pictures, stories, movies, etc.