Monday, November 10, 2008
Laos: A Country So Small I Couldn’t Even Ditch My Sister
I arrived to Luang Prabang, Laos no longer on speaking terms with my sister. I wouldn’t let her sit by the window on the plane, she threw a fit, I told her that is exactly why mom and dad didn’t want her to travel abroad, and she told me (and the entire plane) that mom and dad said I was “too big of a bitch to ever get married.” Isn’t it fun to travel with family. After I kicked her out of our hotel room, we met at some point the next day because, well, it’s a small town. And my mom would have killed me had I actually left my sister in Laos.
Luang Prabang
My first solo morning in Luang Prabang I climbed Mt. Phousi, a big hill in the middle of town. There are great views of the city and the mountain is full of golden Buddha’s in various shapes and sizes. At 6am before the town was awake, hanging out with Buddha was amazingly calming.
I then proceeded to have breakfast. Three times. The food in this town was so amazing that I could not stop eating. First, I ate fruit and granola on an outside patio overlooking the street. Then I had a baguette and coffee at another café. Then Lauren and I sat on the sidewalk eating banana and peanut butter crepes from a sidewalk stand. It was gray and misty but this did not diminish from the town. The architecture was beautiful and the streets were clean. The temples and palace were ornately decorated with gold and the “curly cue” design characteristic of Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia.
We took a boat tour to the Pak Ou caves, which were full of thousands of little Buddha statues. Then we stopped at the Whiskey Village where locals were brewing up their own heinous concoctions. We actually bought a few bottles of whiskey and Lauren even managed to get hers home. As it turns out, the stuff was so nasty even her Milwaukee’s Best-loving friends wouldn’t drink it. They instead began using it to take stains off of the walls of their apartment after house parties. Not so shockingly, it worked wonders.
We went out to dinner with some fellow Canadian travelers and Lauren ordered the house special. Wasn’t she excited to find out that the “soft stuff” in her soup was actually pork fat and buffalo skin. I know I was, because I had ordered fish.
Lauren and I got particularly ambitious one day and rented mountain bikes to take what turned into a 30 mile bike ride to Kuang Si Waterfalls outside of Luang Prabang. Although it was raining, muddy, and uphill for most of the way there, it cleared up just in time for us to swim in the waterfalls.
Of course, such a long bike ride made us tired and so we decided to feast back at the Hmong Night Market in town. There we got an all you can eat buffet for 50 cents. Didn’t quite beat the grilled bananas we had for lunch, but the local beer helped everything to go down more smoothly. After our first dinner, we did a second one at a Lao BBQ restaurant. Because it’s a small world, we ended up running into a Harvard MBA who knew a Peruvian guy that worked at McKinsey with me. We roasted our own meat on a table top grill and occasionally the waitress would come over and rub buffalo fat all over the grill to keep things from sticking. Delicious.
As it turns out, we usually have early buses on the mornings after we drink too much. Our 5am wake up call to catch our bus was only bearable because 1. I was still drunk and 2. We got to see monks along the side of the road asking for alms on our way to the station. Long lines of young men with shaved heads and orange robes walk down the street holding out their baskets to be filled with food from devout locals and tourists along the street.
Vang Vieng
The spiritual experience of the monks was completely obliterated by our next activity, tubing down a river in Vang Vieng, Laos. I’m not exactly sure how to describe this place...Imagine there is this quiet town in Laos that no one has ever been to. The town has a really beautiful river that runs between idyllic village scenery on one side and large rock formations on the other. One day, someone decides it would be fun to get intertubes and float down the river. The next day someone gets thirsty floating down the river and opens a bar. Then someone else gets thirsty and opens 12 more bars. Then they realize that drinking is more fun when you can jump off of things so the bars add rope swings, bungee cords, and zip lines. You write this all up in Lonely Planet, and next thing you know you have one long river, 13 bars with dangerous activities, and 2,000 21 year-old foreigners who have lost their life jackets and are tubing down a river completely obliterated. Not surprisingly, the majority of tourists are Irish and British (come on guys, you KNOW its true).
Vientiane
I lasted about one day there and then Lauren and I took another bus ride to Vientiane, the capital of Laos. Laos has the lowest population density of any country in Asia, and this is the town where you notice it. Not going to lie, it was kind of refreshing. Sometimes I would walk out of my hotel and not see a single person. This is unheard of in Asia. The sites were interesting and doable in 1 day. We visited the temple Wat Sisaket which had walls full of Buddhas. We visited Pautaxi, modeled after the French Arc de Triunf. And we visited the famous La Phat Thuang, the golden structure of Lao Independence.
We also visited an Indian restaurant for the second time on our trip. Oddly, the same man who had served us Indian food at a restaurant in Hanoi was sitting at the table next to us. No lie, we went over and asked him to verify. Small world, small world.
And finally, the trip is coming to an end. Lauren and I hopped a night bus back to Bangkok that had both air conditioning and a bathroom so we didn’t even care that it was running 5 hours late. Bussing in to Bangkok gave us the chance to see just how massive the city is. For hours before we reached the city center we passed by colorful lorries and busses, a great highway with lines and signs, and big Tesco stores.
Once in Bangkok, wee checked Lauren into the hotel and then shared a wine soaked dinner. I then headed off to the airport in a bit of a drunken haze, ready to relax and sleep on my flight to Africa…
Unfortunately, Ethiopian Airlines was not on the same page. While I wanted a quick and easy check-in so that I could go and lay my tipsy head down in the waiting area, Ethiopian Airlines wanted to know where my dad was. What? My dad? Apparently I had used his credit card to book the flight and so he needed to be there with me. Unfortunately, he was in Iraq. As I waited for an hour for the manager who “had to make every decision,” according to the women at the desk, I watched some of the Africans on my flight check their 10 to 15 massive market bags. They sowed them up using rope and the biggest needle I had ever seen. If anyone is wondering how counterfeit goods make it from Asia to Africa, now you know.
After an hour, a tantrum, a forged letter, and a call to Iraq, I finally convinced “the man who must make all decisions” that I was indeed allowed to travel to Africa. While waiting in line I was pumped up on adrenaline, kind of drunk, and going off a dream that told me I would mean someone important on the trip to Tanzania. Therefore, I started talking up some French guy who, as it turned out, was a merchant marine who guarded oil rigs off of the coast of Africa. And I thought my life was exciting.
I later lost him in the Ethiopian airport during a layover when I was checking email for $5 an hour and just as I was wondering why in the hell Mr. Merchant Marine was so important, I got in line for my flight to Tanzania and remembered the trip was not over yet…
Luang Prabang
My first solo morning in Luang Prabang I climbed Mt. Phousi, a big hill in the middle of town. There are great views of the city and the mountain is full of golden Buddha’s in various shapes and sizes. At 6am before the town was awake, hanging out with Buddha was amazingly calming.
I then proceeded to have breakfast. Three times. The food in this town was so amazing that I could not stop eating. First, I ate fruit and granola on an outside patio overlooking the street. Then I had a baguette and coffee at another café. Then Lauren and I sat on the sidewalk eating banana and peanut butter crepes from a sidewalk stand. It was gray and misty but this did not diminish from the town. The architecture was beautiful and the streets were clean. The temples and palace were ornately decorated with gold and the “curly cue” design characteristic of Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia.
We took a boat tour to the Pak Ou caves, which were full of thousands of little Buddha statues. Then we stopped at the Whiskey Village where locals were brewing up their own heinous concoctions. We actually bought a few bottles of whiskey and Lauren even managed to get hers home. As it turns out, the stuff was so nasty even her Milwaukee’s Best-loving friends wouldn’t drink it. They instead began using it to take stains off of the walls of their apartment after house parties. Not so shockingly, it worked wonders.
We went out to dinner with some fellow Canadian travelers and Lauren ordered the house special. Wasn’t she excited to find out that the “soft stuff” in her soup was actually pork fat and buffalo skin. I know I was, because I had ordered fish.
Lauren and I got particularly ambitious one day and rented mountain bikes to take what turned into a 30 mile bike ride to Kuang Si Waterfalls outside of Luang Prabang. Although it was raining, muddy, and uphill for most of the way there, it cleared up just in time for us to swim in the waterfalls.
Of course, such a long bike ride made us tired and so we decided to feast back at the Hmong Night Market in town. There we got an all you can eat buffet for 50 cents. Didn’t quite beat the grilled bananas we had for lunch, but the local beer helped everything to go down more smoothly. After our first dinner, we did a second one at a Lao BBQ restaurant. Because it’s a small world, we ended up running into a Harvard MBA who knew a Peruvian guy that worked at McKinsey with me. We roasted our own meat on a table top grill and occasionally the waitress would come over and rub buffalo fat all over the grill to keep things from sticking. Delicious.
As it turns out, we usually have early buses on the mornings after we drink too much. Our 5am wake up call to catch our bus was only bearable because 1. I was still drunk and 2. We got to see monks along the side of the road asking for alms on our way to the station. Long lines of young men with shaved heads and orange robes walk down the street holding out their baskets to be filled with food from devout locals and tourists along the street.
Vang Vieng
The spiritual experience of the monks was completely obliterated by our next activity, tubing down a river in Vang Vieng, Laos. I’m not exactly sure how to describe this place...Imagine there is this quiet town in Laos that no one has ever been to. The town has a really beautiful river that runs between idyllic village scenery on one side and large rock formations on the other. One day, someone decides it would be fun to get intertubes and float down the river. The next day someone gets thirsty floating down the river and opens a bar. Then someone else gets thirsty and opens 12 more bars. Then they realize that drinking is more fun when you can jump off of things so the bars add rope swings, bungee cords, and zip lines. You write this all up in Lonely Planet, and next thing you know you have one long river, 13 bars with dangerous activities, and 2,000 21 year-old foreigners who have lost their life jackets and are tubing down a river completely obliterated. Not surprisingly, the majority of tourists are Irish and British (come on guys, you KNOW its true).
Vientiane
I lasted about one day there and then Lauren and I took another bus ride to Vientiane, the capital of Laos. Laos has the lowest population density of any country in Asia, and this is the town where you notice it. Not going to lie, it was kind of refreshing. Sometimes I would walk out of my hotel and not see a single person. This is unheard of in Asia. The sites were interesting and doable in 1 day. We visited the temple Wat Sisaket which had walls full of Buddhas. We visited Pautaxi, modeled after the French Arc de Triunf. And we visited the famous La Phat Thuang, the golden structure of Lao Independence.
We also visited an Indian restaurant for the second time on our trip. Oddly, the same man who had served us Indian food at a restaurant in Hanoi was sitting at the table next to us. No lie, we went over and asked him to verify. Small world, small world.
And finally, the trip is coming to an end. Lauren and I hopped a night bus back to Bangkok that had both air conditioning and a bathroom so we didn’t even care that it was running 5 hours late. Bussing in to Bangkok gave us the chance to see just how massive the city is. For hours before we reached the city center we passed by colorful lorries and busses, a great highway with lines and signs, and big Tesco stores.
Once in Bangkok, wee checked Lauren into the hotel and then shared a wine soaked dinner. I then headed off to the airport in a bit of a drunken haze, ready to relax and sleep on my flight to Africa…
Unfortunately, Ethiopian Airlines was not on the same page. While I wanted a quick and easy check-in so that I could go and lay my tipsy head down in the waiting area, Ethiopian Airlines wanted to know where my dad was. What? My dad? Apparently I had used his credit card to book the flight and so he needed to be there with me. Unfortunately, he was in Iraq. As I waited for an hour for the manager who “had to make every decision,” according to the women at the desk, I watched some of the Africans on my flight check their 10 to 15 massive market bags. They sowed them up using rope and the biggest needle I had ever seen. If anyone is wondering how counterfeit goods make it from Asia to Africa, now you know.
After an hour, a tantrum, a forged letter, and a call to Iraq, I finally convinced “the man who must make all decisions” that I was indeed allowed to travel to Africa. While waiting in line I was pumped up on adrenaline, kind of drunk, and going off a dream that told me I would mean someone important on the trip to Tanzania. Therefore, I started talking up some French guy who, as it turned out, was a merchant marine who guarded oil rigs off of the coast of Africa. And I thought my life was exciting.
I later lost him in the Ethiopian airport during a layover when I was checking email for $5 an hour and just as I was wondering why in the hell Mr. Merchant Marine was so important, I got in line for my flight to Tanzania and remembered the trip was not over yet…
Vietnam: The Mekong, Motos, and Mangosteens
Small stilted houses along the Mekong, thousands of motorcycles swarming the streets of Saigon like angry bees, and markets filled with unknown fresh fruits were my first impressions of Vietnam. Later, my impression would be rounded out by awesome historic sites, inaccurate museums, noodles, and people half my size that wanted to kick my ass.
Mekong Delta
We floated into Vietnam via the Mekong River from Cambodia and we passed by farmers working in the fields in their conical hats, houses on stilts, water buffalo, rice paddies, bathing children, and even a little boy pooping off of the side of a boat. Minus that last part, it was idyllic.
On our Mekong tour we also visited a floating market, which consisted of a number of boats centralized in one area that were selling all sorts of produce and other goods. We visited a fish farm, which consisted of a floating house that had traps beneath it that people used to hold and harvest the fish. As a part of our tour we stayed one night at a small home on one of the many channels of the Mekong. The hosts showed us their rice fields and talked about the difficulties they were having producing rice now that inputs (oil and food) were so much more expensive. Throughout our trip, it was interesting to see how the struggling world economy affects everyone in every country. Many people that I met spent a much larger percentage of their income on food and gas which meant that rising prices affected them much more severely. For us rising gas prices may mean we bike to work. For some of these people, it may mean they don’t eat.
Saigon
After several days on the Mekong we eventually got onto a bus and rolled into Saigon, also known as Ho Chi Minh City. The first thing you notice about Saigon are the motor bikes. There must be millions of them. They have a full set of lanes to themselves and they move like a swarm of bees. The second thing you notice, after having traveled through developing countries for a while, is how clean it is. There isn’t garbage piled up and there aren’t stray animals everywhere. The third thing you notice is the language. It is very nasally and sounds like people are yelling at each other.
Somewhere in our travels we befriended a Vietnamese American girl about Lauren’s age. She took us on a tour of Saigon, which included sitting down with some plastic tables and chairs on the sidewalk one evening and feasting on Vietnamese food. She insisted that we try the local specialty which included developed duck egg (an egg where the baby duck is actually partially developed--Yes, you eat feathers), clams, robin eggs, and snails that come in long shells. Apart from this little experiment, the food in Vietnam was actually quite good.
After eating developed duck egg, the second strangest thing we did was visit a Cao Dai Temple a few hours outside of the city. The Cao Dai religion mixes Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism and the temple looked like it came out of Alice in Wonderland, with its pink, garishly decorated exterior. Inside, the pink pillars were adorned with dragons. During a ceremony we watched hundreds of worshippers march into the temple wearing bule, red, yellow, and white robes while they chanted a language that even the Vietnamese said they couldn’t understand.
After the strange religious lesson, it was time to learn about how terrible Americans were from an always entertaining source, the Vietnamese government. We visited the Cu Chi Tunnels in a town that, although located in Southern Vietnam, had sided with the North Vietnamese during the Vietnam War. The informational video at the start of the tour showed old black and white footage of Vietnamese peasants fighting in the fields and hiding in the infamous Cu Chi Tunnels, a network of underground tunnels where the Vietnamese hid during bombing raids. A highlight of the video was the comment: “the devils and ruthless killers [Americans, for those of you who are dense] then bombed women, children, schools, chickens, dogs, and pots and pans.” So when you confess to war atrocities, where does the “yes, I bombed pots and pans fit in?”
Upon re-entering Saigon and taking a quick tour to the ugliest royal palace in South East Asia (we really shouldn’t let communists build palaces), Lauren and I visited the War Remnants Museum. The museum was devoted to The American War. A war you may still be mistakenly referring to as The Vietnam War due to its occurrence in Vietnam and because it involved the Northern Vietnamese fighting the Southern Vietnamese. As has become a theme in my travels, history takes on a different perspective depending on who is telling it. It was extremely sad to see all of the devastation that took place during the war. There was an entire area devoted to foreign journalists who were killed and to civilians who were disfigured from napalm. There was also a section on protests against the war that were going on throughout the world and a section describing all of the atrocities wreaked on the North Vietnamese, commonly referred to as The Liberation Army. According to this museum thousands of Northern Vietnamese soldiers died in the war at the hands of the Americans and South Vietnamese. However, there did not appear to be any South Vietnamese or American troops who died in the war at the hands of the North Vietnamese. Which makes the Northern Vietnamese victory that much more impressive.
Nha Trang
From Saigon we hopped a train to Nha Trang, a beach town about 7 hours north of Saigon. While the scenery was spectacular, the cockroaches crawling out of every hole and the blaring Vietnamese music were not. Once in Nha Trang we jumped on to our now preferred method of transport, the back of motor bikes, and went to our hotel. We decided to make dinner cheap that evening and bought potatoes and corn on the cob from a woman squatting in front of a grill on the side of a busy road.
We came to Nha Trang to check out the diving in Vietnam. As we arrived into town late, we went with the only dive shop that was still open. That probably wasn’t a good idea. My personal guide spoke such bad English that we had to get someone else to come over and translate for him. Luckily, when my regulator broke 20 feet under water, English wasn’t necessary as I pretty much used hand motions to tell the guy that I was getting the hell out of there. After that was straightened out, my unprofessional dive continued as my guide touched and picked up as many things as he could find underwater. On one hand, it was cool to get to touch so many things that you normally aren’t allowed to, on the other I felt a little bad that these “professionals” were following such horrible diving practices.
After the somewhat stressful dive, Lauren and I chilled out in some therapeutic mud baths on the outskirts of town. The “spa” consisted of about 15 bathtubs that get filled with silky mud. Lauren and I shared a bathtub with a Vietnamese Dutch couple who spoke no English and were a great time. They led us through the process from mud bath, to showers, to hot water geysers, to hot tub. I don’t know what was in that mud, but my skin definitely came out much softer.
Hoi An
From Nha Trang, Lauren and I reserved seats on a bus going to Hoi An, about 12 hours up the coast. The busses in Vietnam were following a most inefficient system. Instead of the passengers going to the bus station, the bus would come around to each hotel and pick up the passengers. That means that this massive, lumbering bus has to drive all over town picking up two people here and there. Our bus came and picked up two people at our hotel, left, and then came back to pick us up. At this point, the bus was running 3 hours late. After they wasted an insane amount of time trying to pick everyone up, we drove for about 5 hours and then stopped at a restaurant at midnight where everyone was woken up to have dinner and use the bathroom at the singular rest stop on this 12 hour journey. Did I mention the bus didn’t have a bathroom? The bus also was set up with bunk beds. There were beds one on top of each other running down the left side, right side, and middle of the bus. In the back, there were 5 beds across the bottom and 5 beds across the top. Lauren and I got those top beds and so we were squished between a French couple and some teenage Vietnamese boy. The beds were probably 1.5 feet across which meant you were definitely touching the stranger that you were sleeping next to. After 12 hours on the bus, we arrived in Hoi An. The bus proceeded to stop at hotels that give them a commission and tried to convince us to get off. Exactly what I like to do at 7am.
Once we finally got there, Hoi An had a wonderful section of town that was very old with small streets and classic Chinese-influenced houses. Most of the houses had been converted into shops selling a variety of artisan goods including vases, opium pipes, necklaces, notebooks, dishes, and paintings. We did most of our shopping here. We also popped into a Vietnamese cooking class which included a market and spice garden tour. It was a scorching 99 degrees with humidity outside and so we did most of our activities in the evening.
Hue
From Hoi An we booked a bus to Hue. Hue is known for its ancient Citadel and the Pagoda and Royal Tombs in the surrounding area that are from the Nguyen dynasty. The Nguyen Dynasty was one of the longest reigning in Vietnam and many people took Nguyen as their last name, which is why it is so common among Vietnamese people today. Both the Pagoda and the Tombs used a lot of wood and gold and seemed modeled after Chinese architecture, which is different from Laos and Cambodia which tend to look more like Thailand.
In my mind Hue is also the point where I began to wonder if I liked Vietnam. At one of the tombs Lauren asked a woman selling food from a kiosk about the price of an ice cream cone and was told it was 10 dong ($1.50). Lauren paid with a 20 and the woman returned 5 dong telling her the price had just been raised to 15. She refused to give her back the other 5. In a similar incident, when I got off of a motorbike that had given us a ride, the guy changed the price that he had originally offered us. On top of that, as I was pulling out my cash, I began to hand him a 100 dong bill (confusing it with the similarly colored green 10 dong bill) and he violently grabbed my hand and the bill telling me 10 dong would be fine and wouldn’t let me look at the bill. I finally wrestled it away from him and left him yelling after me. We had yet another problem trying to leave Hue when our bus company substituted a non-sleeper bus in at the last moment (which should have been nearly half the price) and refused to refund any of the money to us. I realize that all of this accounts for about $20 at the end of the day, but it was just adding to a list of grievances…
Hanoi
If I was surprised by those incidences, I was shocked by the way we were treated in Hanoi. I could go on for at least several pages on the number of times someone tried to blatantly rip us off, physically assault us while trying to blatantly rip us off, or chased after us screaming. Suffice to say that between the number of taxi drivers (3), bus drivers (2), tour guides (2), restaurants (1), and hotel attendants (2) that did these things, I was beginning to wonder what in the hell we were doing wrong. (Did I mention we were only in Hanoi for 2 days?) There really isn’t much you can do in these cases except refuse to pay people, which made them violent and psychotic, or steal their car keys when they aren’t looking. None of it really changes anything, but at least the latter made ME feel much better.
Thank God they at least had good food. Thanks to my friend Alisha’s recommendations, we pretty much ate and drank our way through Hanoi. (Alisha, I would also like to say that you must have the patience of a saint to have lived here for two years). We found that Vietnam tended to have three main food choices: fried noodles, noodle in soup, and fried rice. You would then add either chicken, beef, or shrimp to one of the above. In Hanoi they had wonderful noodle soups, great iced coffee with condensed milk, fresh fruit cups covered in condensed milk, and fresh fish.
Hanoi also has 2 highly recommended historical/tourist sites. First, was the stuffed Ho Chi Minh Museum. (I believe they actually call it embalming...) Either way, we got to see a really old, dead historical figure lying in a glass tube surrounded by lights and that was cool. We also had to walk side by side at a designated pace in order to view his casket. I even got grabbed (see here is the overly pushy physical touching again!) by an armed guard at one point for not keeping up the pace. It was kind of fun to act communist while checking out Chairman Ho.
Second, we visited Hoa Lo Prison. Our own John McCain spent about 5 years there during the Vietnam War after he crashed his (4th) plane into a nearby lake. It is commonly referred to as the Hanoi Hilton. The prison, now a museum, is mostly devoted to honoring the Vietnamese Revolutionary Patriotic Soldiers (that’s their wording for themselves, not mine) who fought against the French Criminals (again, their wording, not mine) for Independence in the 1950’s. However, there was a small section devoted to U.S. POWs which held John McCain’s flight uniform and showed a picture of him being pulled out of a nearby lake after he crashed. There were also some signs and photo captions referring to the prisoners “best conditions” and Vietnam’s “humane policy” towards POWs. The rest of the photos generally revolved around the POWs celebrating Christmas with lots of presents, a Christmas tree, and a turkey. It made it seem kind of nice. But then again, anyone who watches FOX news knows how easy it is to bend the truth.
Halong Bay
Speaking of fair and balanced, our trip of Halong Bay showed that we were not the only ones having “cross-cultural” problems in Vietnam. Halong Bay, a bay full of giant, grey limestone formations sticking out of the ocean, is where we did a 2 day houseboat tour with 15 other tourists. For our tour, Lauren and I boarded a houseboat for 2 days with 15 fellow passengers. We went kayaking and visited “Surprise Cave,” named for a massive phallic stalagmite that you see (mainly because it has floodlights on it) when you round a corner of the cave. (Yes, at least they have a sense of humor). We also got to jump off of our houseboat and go swimming. There were women rowing little boats around selling food and beer and so we had access to a bar while swimming in the ocean. Not a bad idea.
The tour was relaxing and fairly uneventful until the some of the foreigners on our boat had a blow up with the crew. Lauren and I were drinking enough to placate ourselves and so we tended to watch the drama unfold from the sidelines. The trouble started when a couple people realized that they had paid double the price and were not getting any of the boat amenities they had paid for. Then, the crew served the Vietnamese tourists on our tour twice as much food as the foreigners and then made all of the foreigners squeeze together at smaller tables. Then, on the last morning, the Vietnamese crew started knocking on everyone’s door at 7am to wake them up so that they could clean for our 12 noon departure from the boat. Being that we had downed a bit of whiskey the night before, a 7am wake up call was kind of brutal. When people came out and asked them to stop, we watched the crew continue to knock on doors, while laughing, just to piss people off. As a rule, I usually don’t mess with Texans or Israelis, but apparently no one told the crew that. I think they know now.
Sapa
While the rest of Vietnam was causing blood pressure spikes, Sapa was a welcome oasis. We sat in the “hard seats” on the overnight train to Sapa because we had been a bit late buying tickets and therefore could not get “sleeper beds.” While there is little to compete with the level of discomfort involved in sitting straight up on a piece of wood squished against the person next to you for 10 hours, we did save $7.
Once at the train station, we spent at least 15 minutes fending off drivers that were trying to pull us into their vans for the 2 hour ride to Sapa. We finally found a van and only had to move all of our things once to a new van because the first one decided it no longer wanted to go to Sapa. Of course this confusion of changing vans meant that the man we paid got lost in the shuffle and so when our van dropped us off in Sapa, the driver chased us through the street demanding we pay again. Did I say Sapa was an Oasis? Well it is, but you kind of have to get away from where all of the people are first.
Sapa, located in northern Vietnam and several miles from the Chinese border, is known for its ethnic hill tribe people. The best guess is that these people migrated here from China, Thailand, and The Himalayas over 500 years ago. Due to the mountainous terrain, these groups had very little communication with surrounding areas. That is why they have kept so many of their customs, the most obvious being their form of dress. The three main groups are the Ty, Red Dao, and Black Hmong. The Ty dress in somewhat traditional Thai clothing while the Red Dhao women wear large, red hats and pluck their hair and eyebrows. Why they pluck all of their hair was in dispute between our guides – it was either to keep away head lice or for beauty. The Black Hmong women wore skirts and blouses made of a darkly dyed cloth.
Sapa is beautiful and surrounded by green, rolling hills. Lauren and I took a two day, one night hike through the area. At the start of our hike we were followed by a number of women trying to sell us earrings and cloth. The rest of the trip was spent getting the silent treatment from our Vietnamese tour guide. About three hours into the hike on our first day, our guide informed us that the river had risen slightly and that we would need to walk through foot-high water for a distance of 10 feet. In lieu of having soaking wet hiking boots for the next 5 hours of our hike, I decided to take off my shoes and socks and wade through barefoot. My guide told me not to, I asked him why, he didn’t have a good reason, and so I did it anyway. After I made it safely to the other side and put my shoes back on, our guide fumed silently for about 10 minutes before he blew up on me screaming: “I am guide! All tourists listen to me! But you, no! You don’t listen to me! You need to do what I say because I am guide and you took off shoes when I said don’t take off shoes!” I really don’t have time for male temper tantrums and/or power trips, but I felt that I was justified in my decision to not walk for 5 hours in soaking wet shoes, and so I told him that. I also asked him what I should do if he told me to jump off of a bridge. That stumped him. We continued for several hours before he would speak to me again.
The one night we had on the trail we spent with a Red Dao family. The first thing that struck me about their house was that the father was sitting in the middle of the floor sucking tobacco smoke out of a long pipe that was immersed in water. I hadn’t seen a real water bong since, oh, about 11th grade. We sat around the fire on our little stools helping our cook make dinner. The cookware and fire were reminiscent of my kitchen in Peru. For dinner we feasted on rice, tofu, noodles, vegetables, and some rice wine that tasted like kerosene.
After our hike back into Sapa town, Lauren and I spent the night in a $12 per night hotel with beautiful views of the surrounding valley. The following day we took a 7 hour bus ride to the Bac Ha market. The majority of the people at the market were the Flower Hmong. The women in this group wear brightly colored skirts and blouses and reminded me of some of the rural areas of Peru. The rest of the people were predominantly tall Caucasians of European descent with cameras around their necks.
We then took our overnight train back to Hanoi. Once again we had not bought our tickets in time and got stuck with hard seats. However, this time we were smart and bought two hard seats each which gave us enough room to lay down. Unfortunately this made everyone else on the train think that there were empty seats and floor space and we spent the majority of our time fighting off weird men.
Back in Hanoi, my favorite city, I began to wonder what it was that made getting along with the Vietnamese so difficult. On one hand, I thought it could be the language barrier. I don’t speak Vietnamese and people in Vietnam do not speak English very well. Perhaps it is all miscommunication. Secondly, I thought that it might be what I refer to as the “what the f*** face” that the Vietnamese use. I used to think they actually meant “what the f***” when they gave me that look, but after getting the look in friendly situations, I began to think that it might be as significant as me scratching my head. Again, a miscommunication. A third idea is that we got mistreated because we were Americans. It would make sense. After all we barged into their country talking about dominoes and then they beat us in a war only to find that Americans got to go home to a 2 car garage and freedom while they got stuck with 2 more wars and a political system known for repression and ugly architecture. Not exactly justice from their perspective. However, most people thought I was German, and they were still mean to me.
It appears that I have had too much human interaction over the last few weeks and I am itching to get out of Vietnam. Our next stop, mercifully, has the lowest population density in all of Asia. Laos here we come!
Mekong Delta
We floated into Vietnam via the Mekong River from Cambodia and we passed by farmers working in the fields in their conical hats, houses on stilts, water buffalo, rice paddies, bathing children, and even a little boy pooping off of the side of a boat. Minus that last part, it was idyllic.
On our Mekong tour we also visited a floating market, which consisted of a number of boats centralized in one area that were selling all sorts of produce and other goods. We visited a fish farm, which consisted of a floating house that had traps beneath it that people used to hold and harvest the fish. As a part of our tour we stayed one night at a small home on one of the many channels of the Mekong. The hosts showed us their rice fields and talked about the difficulties they were having producing rice now that inputs (oil and food) were so much more expensive. Throughout our trip, it was interesting to see how the struggling world economy affects everyone in every country. Many people that I met spent a much larger percentage of their income on food and gas which meant that rising prices affected them much more severely. For us rising gas prices may mean we bike to work. For some of these people, it may mean they don’t eat.
Saigon
After several days on the Mekong we eventually got onto a bus and rolled into Saigon, also known as Ho Chi Minh City. The first thing you notice about Saigon are the motor bikes. There must be millions of them. They have a full set of lanes to themselves and they move like a swarm of bees. The second thing you notice, after having traveled through developing countries for a while, is how clean it is. There isn’t garbage piled up and there aren’t stray animals everywhere. The third thing you notice is the language. It is very nasally and sounds like people are yelling at each other.
Somewhere in our travels we befriended a Vietnamese American girl about Lauren’s age. She took us on a tour of Saigon, which included sitting down with some plastic tables and chairs on the sidewalk one evening and feasting on Vietnamese food. She insisted that we try the local specialty which included developed duck egg (an egg where the baby duck is actually partially developed--Yes, you eat feathers), clams, robin eggs, and snails that come in long shells. Apart from this little experiment, the food in Vietnam was actually quite good.
After eating developed duck egg, the second strangest thing we did was visit a Cao Dai Temple a few hours outside of the city. The Cao Dai religion mixes Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism and the temple looked like it came out of Alice in Wonderland, with its pink, garishly decorated exterior. Inside, the pink pillars were adorned with dragons. During a ceremony we watched hundreds of worshippers march into the temple wearing bule, red, yellow, and white robes while they chanted a language that even the Vietnamese said they couldn’t understand.
After the strange religious lesson, it was time to learn about how terrible Americans were from an always entertaining source, the Vietnamese government. We visited the Cu Chi Tunnels in a town that, although located in Southern Vietnam, had sided with the North Vietnamese during the Vietnam War. The informational video at the start of the tour showed old black and white footage of Vietnamese peasants fighting in the fields and hiding in the infamous Cu Chi Tunnels, a network of underground tunnels where the Vietnamese hid during bombing raids. A highlight of the video was the comment: “the devils and ruthless killers [Americans, for those of you who are dense] then bombed women, children, schools, chickens, dogs, and pots and pans.” So when you confess to war atrocities, where does the “yes, I bombed pots and pans fit in?”
Upon re-entering Saigon and taking a quick tour to the ugliest royal palace in South East Asia (we really shouldn’t let communists build palaces), Lauren and I visited the War Remnants Museum. The museum was devoted to The American War. A war you may still be mistakenly referring to as The Vietnam War due to its occurrence in Vietnam and because it involved the Northern Vietnamese fighting the Southern Vietnamese. As has become a theme in my travels, history takes on a different perspective depending on who is telling it. It was extremely sad to see all of the devastation that took place during the war. There was an entire area devoted to foreign journalists who were killed and to civilians who were disfigured from napalm. There was also a section on protests against the war that were going on throughout the world and a section describing all of the atrocities wreaked on the North Vietnamese, commonly referred to as The Liberation Army. According to this museum thousands of Northern Vietnamese soldiers died in the war at the hands of the Americans and South Vietnamese. However, there did not appear to be any South Vietnamese or American troops who died in the war at the hands of the North Vietnamese. Which makes the Northern Vietnamese victory that much more impressive.
Nha Trang
From Saigon we hopped a train to Nha Trang, a beach town about 7 hours north of Saigon. While the scenery was spectacular, the cockroaches crawling out of every hole and the blaring Vietnamese music were not. Once in Nha Trang we jumped on to our now preferred method of transport, the back of motor bikes, and went to our hotel. We decided to make dinner cheap that evening and bought potatoes and corn on the cob from a woman squatting in front of a grill on the side of a busy road.
We came to Nha Trang to check out the diving in Vietnam. As we arrived into town late, we went with the only dive shop that was still open. That probably wasn’t a good idea. My personal guide spoke such bad English that we had to get someone else to come over and translate for him. Luckily, when my regulator broke 20 feet under water, English wasn’t necessary as I pretty much used hand motions to tell the guy that I was getting the hell out of there. After that was straightened out, my unprofessional dive continued as my guide touched and picked up as many things as he could find underwater. On one hand, it was cool to get to touch so many things that you normally aren’t allowed to, on the other I felt a little bad that these “professionals” were following such horrible diving practices.
After the somewhat stressful dive, Lauren and I chilled out in some therapeutic mud baths on the outskirts of town. The “spa” consisted of about 15 bathtubs that get filled with silky mud. Lauren and I shared a bathtub with a Vietnamese Dutch couple who spoke no English and were a great time. They led us through the process from mud bath, to showers, to hot water geysers, to hot tub. I don’t know what was in that mud, but my skin definitely came out much softer.
Hoi An
From Nha Trang, Lauren and I reserved seats on a bus going to Hoi An, about 12 hours up the coast. The busses in Vietnam were following a most inefficient system. Instead of the passengers going to the bus station, the bus would come around to each hotel and pick up the passengers. That means that this massive, lumbering bus has to drive all over town picking up two people here and there. Our bus came and picked up two people at our hotel, left, and then came back to pick us up. At this point, the bus was running 3 hours late. After they wasted an insane amount of time trying to pick everyone up, we drove for about 5 hours and then stopped at a restaurant at midnight where everyone was woken up to have dinner and use the bathroom at the singular rest stop on this 12 hour journey. Did I mention the bus didn’t have a bathroom? The bus also was set up with bunk beds. There were beds one on top of each other running down the left side, right side, and middle of the bus. In the back, there were 5 beds across the bottom and 5 beds across the top. Lauren and I got those top beds and so we were squished between a French couple and some teenage Vietnamese boy. The beds were probably 1.5 feet across which meant you were definitely touching the stranger that you were sleeping next to. After 12 hours on the bus, we arrived in Hoi An. The bus proceeded to stop at hotels that give them a commission and tried to convince us to get off. Exactly what I like to do at 7am.
Once we finally got there, Hoi An had a wonderful section of town that was very old with small streets and classic Chinese-influenced houses. Most of the houses had been converted into shops selling a variety of artisan goods including vases, opium pipes, necklaces, notebooks, dishes, and paintings. We did most of our shopping here. We also popped into a Vietnamese cooking class which included a market and spice garden tour. It was a scorching 99 degrees with humidity outside and so we did most of our activities in the evening.
Hue
From Hoi An we booked a bus to Hue. Hue is known for its ancient Citadel and the Pagoda and Royal Tombs in the surrounding area that are from the Nguyen dynasty. The Nguyen Dynasty was one of the longest reigning in Vietnam and many people took Nguyen as their last name, which is why it is so common among Vietnamese people today. Both the Pagoda and the Tombs used a lot of wood and gold and seemed modeled after Chinese architecture, which is different from Laos and Cambodia which tend to look more like Thailand.
In my mind Hue is also the point where I began to wonder if I liked Vietnam. At one of the tombs Lauren asked a woman selling food from a kiosk about the price of an ice cream cone and was told it was 10 dong ($1.50). Lauren paid with a 20 and the woman returned 5 dong telling her the price had just been raised to 15. She refused to give her back the other 5. In a similar incident, when I got off of a motorbike that had given us a ride, the guy changed the price that he had originally offered us. On top of that, as I was pulling out my cash, I began to hand him a 100 dong bill (confusing it with the similarly colored green 10 dong bill) and he violently grabbed my hand and the bill telling me 10 dong would be fine and wouldn’t let me look at the bill. I finally wrestled it away from him and left him yelling after me. We had yet another problem trying to leave Hue when our bus company substituted a non-sleeper bus in at the last moment (which should have been nearly half the price) and refused to refund any of the money to us. I realize that all of this accounts for about $20 at the end of the day, but it was just adding to a list of grievances…
Hanoi
If I was surprised by those incidences, I was shocked by the way we were treated in Hanoi. I could go on for at least several pages on the number of times someone tried to blatantly rip us off, physically assault us while trying to blatantly rip us off, or chased after us screaming. Suffice to say that between the number of taxi drivers (3), bus drivers (2), tour guides (2), restaurants (1), and hotel attendants (2) that did these things, I was beginning to wonder what in the hell we were doing wrong. (Did I mention we were only in Hanoi for 2 days?) There really isn’t much you can do in these cases except refuse to pay people, which made them violent and psychotic, or steal their car keys when they aren’t looking. None of it really changes anything, but at least the latter made ME feel much better.
Thank God they at least had good food. Thanks to my friend Alisha’s recommendations, we pretty much ate and drank our way through Hanoi. (Alisha, I would also like to say that you must have the patience of a saint to have lived here for two years). We found that Vietnam tended to have three main food choices: fried noodles, noodle in soup, and fried rice. You would then add either chicken, beef, or shrimp to one of the above. In Hanoi they had wonderful noodle soups, great iced coffee with condensed milk, fresh fruit cups covered in condensed milk, and fresh fish.
Hanoi also has 2 highly recommended historical/tourist sites. First, was the stuffed Ho Chi Minh Museum. (I believe they actually call it embalming...) Either way, we got to see a really old, dead historical figure lying in a glass tube surrounded by lights and that was cool. We also had to walk side by side at a designated pace in order to view his casket. I even got grabbed (see here is the overly pushy physical touching again!) by an armed guard at one point for not keeping up the pace. It was kind of fun to act communist while checking out Chairman Ho.
Second, we visited Hoa Lo Prison. Our own John McCain spent about 5 years there during the Vietnam War after he crashed his (4th) plane into a nearby lake. It is commonly referred to as the Hanoi Hilton. The prison, now a museum, is mostly devoted to honoring the Vietnamese Revolutionary Patriotic Soldiers (that’s their wording for themselves, not mine) who fought against the French Criminals (again, their wording, not mine) for Independence in the 1950’s. However, there was a small section devoted to U.S. POWs which held John McCain’s flight uniform and showed a picture of him being pulled out of a nearby lake after he crashed. There were also some signs and photo captions referring to the prisoners “best conditions” and Vietnam’s “humane policy” towards POWs. The rest of the photos generally revolved around the POWs celebrating Christmas with lots of presents, a Christmas tree, and a turkey. It made it seem kind of nice. But then again, anyone who watches FOX news knows how easy it is to bend the truth.
Halong Bay
Speaking of fair and balanced, our trip of Halong Bay showed that we were not the only ones having “cross-cultural” problems in Vietnam. Halong Bay, a bay full of giant, grey limestone formations sticking out of the ocean, is where we did a 2 day houseboat tour with 15 other tourists. For our tour, Lauren and I boarded a houseboat for 2 days with 15 fellow passengers. We went kayaking and visited “Surprise Cave,” named for a massive phallic stalagmite that you see (mainly because it has floodlights on it) when you round a corner of the cave. (Yes, at least they have a sense of humor). We also got to jump off of our houseboat and go swimming. There were women rowing little boats around selling food and beer and so we had access to a bar while swimming in the ocean. Not a bad idea.
The tour was relaxing and fairly uneventful until the some of the foreigners on our boat had a blow up with the crew. Lauren and I were drinking enough to placate ourselves and so we tended to watch the drama unfold from the sidelines. The trouble started when a couple people realized that they had paid double the price and were not getting any of the boat amenities they had paid for. Then, the crew served the Vietnamese tourists on our tour twice as much food as the foreigners and then made all of the foreigners squeeze together at smaller tables. Then, on the last morning, the Vietnamese crew started knocking on everyone’s door at 7am to wake them up so that they could clean for our 12 noon departure from the boat. Being that we had downed a bit of whiskey the night before, a 7am wake up call was kind of brutal. When people came out and asked them to stop, we watched the crew continue to knock on doors, while laughing, just to piss people off. As a rule, I usually don’t mess with Texans or Israelis, but apparently no one told the crew that. I think they know now.
Sapa
While the rest of Vietnam was causing blood pressure spikes, Sapa was a welcome oasis. We sat in the “hard seats” on the overnight train to Sapa because we had been a bit late buying tickets and therefore could not get “sleeper beds.” While there is little to compete with the level of discomfort involved in sitting straight up on a piece of wood squished against the person next to you for 10 hours, we did save $7.
Once at the train station, we spent at least 15 minutes fending off drivers that were trying to pull us into their vans for the 2 hour ride to Sapa. We finally found a van and only had to move all of our things once to a new van because the first one decided it no longer wanted to go to Sapa. Of course this confusion of changing vans meant that the man we paid got lost in the shuffle and so when our van dropped us off in Sapa, the driver chased us through the street demanding we pay again. Did I say Sapa was an Oasis? Well it is, but you kind of have to get away from where all of the people are first.
Sapa, located in northern Vietnam and several miles from the Chinese border, is known for its ethnic hill tribe people. The best guess is that these people migrated here from China, Thailand, and The Himalayas over 500 years ago. Due to the mountainous terrain, these groups had very little communication with surrounding areas. That is why they have kept so many of their customs, the most obvious being their form of dress. The three main groups are the Ty, Red Dao, and Black Hmong. The Ty dress in somewhat traditional Thai clothing while the Red Dhao women wear large, red hats and pluck their hair and eyebrows. Why they pluck all of their hair was in dispute between our guides – it was either to keep away head lice or for beauty. The Black Hmong women wore skirts and blouses made of a darkly dyed cloth.
Sapa is beautiful and surrounded by green, rolling hills. Lauren and I took a two day, one night hike through the area. At the start of our hike we were followed by a number of women trying to sell us earrings and cloth. The rest of the trip was spent getting the silent treatment from our Vietnamese tour guide. About three hours into the hike on our first day, our guide informed us that the river had risen slightly and that we would need to walk through foot-high water for a distance of 10 feet. In lieu of having soaking wet hiking boots for the next 5 hours of our hike, I decided to take off my shoes and socks and wade through barefoot. My guide told me not to, I asked him why, he didn’t have a good reason, and so I did it anyway. After I made it safely to the other side and put my shoes back on, our guide fumed silently for about 10 minutes before he blew up on me screaming: “I am guide! All tourists listen to me! But you, no! You don’t listen to me! You need to do what I say because I am guide and you took off shoes when I said don’t take off shoes!” I really don’t have time for male temper tantrums and/or power trips, but I felt that I was justified in my decision to not walk for 5 hours in soaking wet shoes, and so I told him that. I also asked him what I should do if he told me to jump off of a bridge. That stumped him. We continued for several hours before he would speak to me again.
The one night we had on the trail we spent with a Red Dao family. The first thing that struck me about their house was that the father was sitting in the middle of the floor sucking tobacco smoke out of a long pipe that was immersed in water. I hadn’t seen a real water bong since, oh, about 11th grade. We sat around the fire on our little stools helping our cook make dinner. The cookware and fire were reminiscent of my kitchen in Peru. For dinner we feasted on rice, tofu, noodles, vegetables, and some rice wine that tasted like kerosene.
After our hike back into Sapa town, Lauren and I spent the night in a $12 per night hotel with beautiful views of the surrounding valley. The following day we took a 7 hour bus ride to the Bac Ha market. The majority of the people at the market were the Flower Hmong. The women in this group wear brightly colored skirts and blouses and reminded me of some of the rural areas of Peru. The rest of the people were predominantly tall Caucasians of European descent with cameras around their necks.
We then took our overnight train back to Hanoi. Once again we had not bought our tickets in time and got stuck with hard seats. However, this time we were smart and bought two hard seats each which gave us enough room to lay down. Unfortunately this made everyone else on the train think that there were empty seats and floor space and we spent the majority of our time fighting off weird men.
Back in Hanoi, my favorite city, I began to wonder what it was that made getting along with the Vietnamese so difficult. On one hand, I thought it could be the language barrier. I don’t speak Vietnamese and people in Vietnam do not speak English very well. Perhaps it is all miscommunication. Secondly, I thought that it might be what I refer to as the “what the f*** face” that the Vietnamese use. I used to think they actually meant “what the f***” when they gave me that look, but after getting the look in friendly situations, I began to think that it might be as significant as me scratching my head. Again, a miscommunication. A third idea is that we got mistreated because we were Americans. It would make sense. After all we barged into their country talking about dominoes and then they beat us in a war only to find that Americans got to go home to a 2 car garage and freedom while they got stuck with 2 more wars and a political system known for repression and ugly architecture. Not exactly justice from their perspective. However, most people thought I was German, and they were still mean to me.
It appears that I have had too much human interaction over the last few weeks and I am itching to get out of Vietnam. Our next stop, mercifully, has the lowest population density in all of Asia. Laos here we come!
Friday, October 17, 2008
Cambodia: Temples and Terror
After arriving into the Bangkok airport from Japan my first task was to find my missing sister, Lauren, and then find a way to make it to Cambodia. Due to the mishap that is called Malaysia Airlines, I was 12 hours later than expected. Luckily I have a track record for missing flights and being late, so Lauren didn’t worry as she spent the day waiting for me at Bangkok International.
All of my research on entering Cambodia stressed that it was much easier to fly from Bangkok. Complaints about cheating bus companies and shady border officials are supposed to deter travelers. I thought that made it sound exciting. So Lauren and I set off on a train from Bangkok to the Thai-Cambodian border. After being stamped to leave Thailand, we crossed through No Man’s Land and lined up at the Cambodian Visa booth. The sign over the booth read “Cambodian Visa: $25.” When I handed my passport and $25 to the visa agent he said “No, it’s $35.” Hmmm. I explained to him that the massive sign hanging outside of his office said $25. He threw my passport at me, slammed the window, and went back to playing cards with his 4 other uniformed friends. I asked someone next to me where I could find the police. Pity, it turns out that the men charging $10 extra for visas were the police. All of the other pushover Americans ahead of us had paid the extra money and so I wasn’t left with much bargaining power (I wanted to start a strike) and so I threw a tantrum until he eventually lowered the price to $30.
As far as first impressions go, Cambodia wasn’t doing so well.
After we eventually made it into Cambodia we stood at the border with 30 other foreigners who had been ditched by their unscrupulous bus company and were ride-less. Luckily, we had heard about that scam and had opted instead for the train and finding our own transport once inside Cambodia. A number of shady men who had been “helping” us with the visa process were now trying to “help” us on to “tourist busses.” I tracked down a few taxis but everyone that agreed to take me was then subject to harassment from the man “helping” us to find a bus. The entire racket was so frustrating that we finally hiked down the road with our backpacks, found an independent taxi that was using us as a cover to smuggle shoes through a checkpoint (he had over 50 pairs of shoes hidden under our backpacks in the trunk and under the mats in the car by our feet), and offered him a reasonable price to take us to Siem Reap.
Upon entering Cambodia, its most notable characteristic is schizophrenia. It accepts three currencies: the Thai Baht, the Cambodian Real, and the American Dollar. Dollars come out of the ATM machines, change is given in Real, and Baht are worth 30% less than in Thailand. They drive on the right side of the road. Or the left. It kind of depends on what is in front of you. Normally, you can try to determine which side of the road to drive on based on which side of the car is the driver’s side. However, in Cambodia, some cars had the driver’s side on the left, and some had it on the right. Our first stop within this befuddled country was Siem Reap.
Siem Reap’s fame comes from its proximity to the Angkor Wat ruins. It’s got a few streets full of trendy, touristy restaurants and bars (such as the clever “Angkor What?” bar) but right outside of that center is a pretty typical Cambodian town: Motorbikes, dust, street markets, and burning garbage. Lonely Planet and other guide books suggested spending anywhere from 3 to 7 days perusing the nearby Angkor Wat ruins. Lauren and I penciled in a day and were done by 1pm. The numerous ruins were laid out over several square miles and we had to hire a tuk-tuk (motorbike with a cart attached to the back) to take us from ruin to ruin. The crown jewel of the ruins, THE Angkor Wat temple, was where we went at 5am to watch the sunrise. After that we visited some other famous spots including Tha Prohm, left a ruin for so long that massive trees were growing out of it; Ta Keo which we were able to climb up for some great views; and Preah Kahn which had phallic symbols on everything including a little water spout shaped like a penis. At this point, Cambodia started to redeem itself.
After the world’s fastest tour of the Angkor Wat ruins, Lauren and I packed up our backpacks and climbed (backpacks and all) onto the back of a set of motor bikes and jetted off to the bus station. Holding a 40 pound backpack on your back while judging how tightly you should be hugging the little Cambodian man driving the motorcycle is always challenging. My case was especially challenging because I was also screaming at him to turn around as I had forgotten my sunglasses at the hostal. Once I finally communicated this message, which was unfortunately once we were already at the bus station, we turned around and returned to the hostal to search for my sunglasses. I guess hostals don’t really expect you to come back once you’ve checked out. If they did, they would probably go to more of an effort to make it at least look like they’ve changed the sheets and towels. How pleasant. Even more unfortunate was that my sunglasses weren’t even there and that I had left Lauren to stall the bus for me. After enduring 30 minutes of glaring stares from fellow passengers, Lauren was very happy to see me return with my sunglasses. Which had actually been in my purse the whole time. Oops.
The ride from Siem Reap to Phnom Penh allowed us to sample the culinary cuisine at each road side rest stop. Some people may think this is why I contract regular food-borne illnesses while traveling. I think there is no other way to really experience the country. On this trip I sampled boiled eggs, fresh corn on cob, and bananas stuffed with sweet rice, all without hazard. But occasionally, you do get burned. Lauren and I had opted to play it safe and skip the fried grasshoppers in favor of some packaged crackers. Perhaps a bit less protein, but what could be safer than packaged crackers? After holding them in her purse, on her lap, for at least 2 hours, Lauren opened the crackers and 3 little cockroaches crawled out. Playing it cool, Lauren started screaming at the top of her lungs and jumped up onto the seat while throwing the crackers halfway across the bus. I took my flip flop and frantically started squashing cockroaches. We had not made many friends by holding up the bus for 30 minutes. We lost our remaining allies with this little display. I suppose it is one thing to waste 30 minutes of your life, but another thing entirely to miss part of one of the most romantic Cambodian love song videos of all times, which just happened to be playing on the bus at that moment.
The bus ride led us into the pulsing heart of Phnom Penh. After the green rice paddies and wooden stilt houses of the country side, the tall dirty-white buildings and streets bustling with motorbikes was a change. Phnom Penh does have a very nice area full of restaurants and bars along the Mekong River and a Royal Palace to attract tourists. Unfortunately for Cambodia, the other main attractions are The Killing Fields and Tuol Sleng Prison.
For a quick history lesson on Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge came to power sometime after the French lost control. Their main goal was to create equality in society by returning Cambodia to its agrarian roots (sometimes called communism). To the Khmer Rouge, this meant exterminating and relocating anyone in society who qualified as educated, elite, or urban. This included everyone from teachers and doctors to people who wore glasses to people who had recently moved to cities from the countryside. They relocated thousands of people back into rural areas where they were forced to work side by side with, and hold a lower status than, their rural countrymen. Many people were forced into Tuol Sleng Prison and other “jails.” The jails and countryside became feeders for the mass extermination graves now referred to as The Killing Fields. It is estimated that anywhere from 1-3 million people were killed between the years of 1975-1979. Cambodia’s population was only about 7 million at the time.
Toul Sleng prison was a former high school whose rooms had been turned into mass holding cells where people were chained together by their feet. Other rooms had rudimentary wooden walls set up to create solitary confinement cells. Today it is a simple museum with metal bed frames and torture tools left in the cells, hundreds of prisoner mugshots posted on the walls, and pictures of mutilated bodies haunting the rooms. Almost 30 years since the prison has been used, there are still blood stains on the floor. A list of rules is posted outside of the prison and includes things such as “Don’t be a fool for you are the chap to thwart the revolution” and “While getting lashes or electrocution you must not cry at all”. Eerie, would be an understatement. I could feel ghosts there.
Prisoners held at Toul Sleng were transported to the nearby Killing Fields. Today, besides a tall, narrow monument, all you will find on first inspection is a grassy field with pockmarks the size of kiddy pools. The monument is full of skulls, clothing, and other personal effects of the people who were found nearby. The pockmarks in the field are 30 year-old, partially sunken graves. Upon closer inspection, and especially after a good rain, you can see the clothing being burped up from the ground, tattered and bleached by time. Some of the graves are even labeled based on who or what was buried there: Headless bodies, women and children... Shockingly, this genocide, where upwards of 2 million people were systematically murdered, is very rarely discussed. Have you heard of it?
All right, so that’s kind of a big downer to end on. I’ll go on to say that after a day in Phnom Penh Lauren and I took off to Sihanoukville, a beach town about 5 hours from the capital. There we rented a bungalow overlooking the ocean for $12 a night (total) and feasted on fresh fish, octopus on a stick, and beer. After two days of down time at the beach, we returned to Phnom Penh to catch a boat down the Mekong River into Vietnam. We passed from the main river channel into smaller tributaries that make up the Mekong Delta. The smaller rivers were flanked by houses on stilts, farmers wearing conical hats, rice paddy fields, water buffalo, and bathing children. It was so idyllic and serene, it almost made you want to move to Vietnam. Almost.
All of my research on entering Cambodia stressed that it was much easier to fly from Bangkok. Complaints about cheating bus companies and shady border officials are supposed to deter travelers. I thought that made it sound exciting. So Lauren and I set off on a train from Bangkok to the Thai-Cambodian border. After being stamped to leave Thailand, we crossed through No Man’s Land and lined up at the Cambodian Visa booth. The sign over the booth read “Cambodian Visa: $25.” When I handed my passport and $25 to the visa agent he said “No, it’s $35.” Hmmm. I explained to him that the massive sign hanging outside of his office said $25. He threw my passport at me, slammed the window, and went back to playing cards with his 4 other uniformed friends. I asked someone next to me where I could find the police. Pity, it turns out that the men charging $10 extra for visas were the police. All of the other pushover Americans ahead of us had paid the extra money and so I wasn’t left with much bargaining power (I wanted to start a strike) and so I threw a tantrum until he eventually lowered the price to $30.
As far as first impressions go, Cambodia wasn’t doing so well.
After we eventually made it into Cambodia we stood at the border with 30 other foreigners who had been ditched by their unscrupulous bus company and were ride-less. Luckily, we had heard about that scam and had opted instead for the train and finding our own transport once inside Cambodia. A number of shady men who had been “helping” us with the visa process were now trying to “help” us on to “tourist busses.” I tracked down a few taxis but everyone that agreed to take me was then subject to harassment from the man “helping” us to find a bus. The entire racket was so frustrating that we finally hiked down the road with our backpacks, found an independent taxi that was using us as a cover to smuggle shoes through a checkpoint (he had over 50 pairs of shoes hidden under our backpacks in the trunk and under the mats in the car by our feet), and offered him a reasonable price to take us to Siem Reap.
Upon entering Cambodia, its most notable characteristic is schizophrenia. It accepts three currencies: the Thai Baht, the Cambodian Real, and the American Dollar. Dollars come out of the ATM machines, change is given in Real, and Baht are worth 30% less than in Thailand. They drive on the right side of the road. Or the left. It kind of depends on what is in front of you. Normally, you can try to determine which side of the road to drive on based on which side of the car is the driver’s side. However, in Cambodia, some cars had the driver’s side on the left, and some had it on the right. Our first stop within this befuddled country was Siem Reap.
Siem Reap’s fame comes from its proximity to the Angkor Wat ruins. It’s got a few streets full of trendy, touristy restaurants and bars (such as the clever “Angkor What?” bar) but right outside of that center is a pretty typical Cambodian town: Motorbikes, dust, street markets, and burning garbage. Lonely Planet and other guide books suggested spending anywhere from 3 to 7 days perusing the nearby Angkor Wat ruins. Lauren and I penciled in a day and were done by 1pm. The numerous ruins were laid out over several square miles and we had to hire a tuk-tuk (motorbike with a cart attached to the back) to take us from ruin to ruin. The crown jewel of the ruins, THE Angkor Wat temple, was where we went at 5am to watch the sunrise. After that we visited some other famous spots including Tha Prohm, left a ruin for so long that massive trees were growing out of it; Ta Keo which we were able to climb up for some great views; and Preah Kahn which had phallic symbols on everything including a little water spout shaped like a penis. At this point, Cambodia started to redeem itself.
After the world’s fastest tour of the Angkor Wat ruins, Lauren and I packed up our backpacks and climbed (backpacks and all) onto the back of a set of motor bikes and jetted off to the bus station. Holding a 40 pound backpack on your back while judging how tightly you should be hugging the little Cambodian man driving the motorcycle is always challenging. My case was especially challenging because I was also screaming at him to turn around as I had forgotten my sunglasses at the hostal. Once I finally communicated this message, which was unfortunately once we were already at the bus station, we turned around and returned to the hostal to search for my sunglasses. I guess hostals don’t really expect you to come back once you’ve checked out. If they did, they would probably go to more of an effort to make it at least look like they’ve changed the sheets and towels. How pleasant. Even more unfortunate was that my sunglasses weren’t even there and that I had left Lauren to stall the bus for me. After enduring 30 minutes of glaring stares from fellow passengers, Lauren was very happy to see me return with my sunglasses. Which had actually been in my purse the whole time. Oops.
The ride from Siem Reap to Phnom Penh allowed us to sample the culinary cuisine at each road side rest stop. Some people may think this is why I contract regular food-borne illnesses while traveling. I think there is no other way to really experience the country. On this trip I sampled boiled eggs, fresh corn on cob, and bananas stuffed with sweet rice, all without hazard. But occasionally, you do get burned. Lauren and I had opted to play it safe and skip the fried grasshoppers in favor of some packaged crackers. Perhaps a bit less protein, but what could be safer than packaged crackers? After holding them in her purse, on her lap, for at least 2 hours, Lauren opened the crackers and 3 little cockroaches crawled out. Playing it cool, Lauren started screaming at the top of her lungs and jumped up onto the seat while throwing the crackers halfway across the bus. I took my flip flop and frantically started squashing cockroaches. We had not made many friends by holding up the bus for 30 minutes. We lost our remaining allies with this little display. I suppose it is one thing to waste 30 minutes of your life, but another thing entirely to miss part of one of the most romantic Cambodian love song videos of all times, which just happened to be playing on the bus at that moment.
The bus ride led us into the pulsing heart of Phnom Penh. After the green rice paddies and wooden stilt houses of the country side, the tall dirty-white buildings and streets bustling with motorbikes was a change. Phnom Penh does have a very nice area full of restaurants and bars along the Mekong River and a Royal Palace to attract tourists. Unfortunately for Cambodia, the other main attractions are The Killing Fields and Tuol Sleng Prison.
For a quick history lesson on Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge came to power sometime after the French lost control. Their main goal was to create equality in society by returning Cambodia to its agrarian roots (sometimes called communism). To the Khmer Rouge, this meant exterminating and relocating anyone in society who qualified as educated, elite, or urban. This included everyone from teachers and doctors to people who wore glasses to people who had recently moved to cities from the countryside. They relocated thousands of people back into rural areas where they were forced to work side by side with, and hold a lower status than, their rural countrymen. Many people were forced into Tuol Sleng Prison and other “jails.” The jails and countryside became feeders for the mass extermination graves now referred to as The Killing Fields. It is estimated that anywhere from 1-3 million people were killed between the years of 1975-1979. Cambodia’s population was only about 7 million at the time.
Toul Sleng prison was a former high school whose rooms had been turned into mass holding cells where people were chained together by their feet. Other rooms had rudimentary wooden walls set up to create solitary confinement cells. Today it is a simple museum with metal bed frames and torture tools left in the cells, hundreds of prisoner mugshots posted on the walls, and pictures of mutilated bodies haunting the rooms. Almost 30 years since the prison has been used, there are still blood stains on the floor. A list of rules is posted outside of the prison and includes things such as “Don’t be a fool for you are the chap to thwart the revolution” and “While getting lashes or electrocution you must not cry at all”. Eerie, would be an understatement. I could feel ghosts there.
Prisoners held at Toul Sleng were transported to the nearby Killing Fields. Today, besides a tall, narrow monument, all you will find on first inspection is a grassy field with pockmarks the size of kiddy pools. The monument is full of skulls, clothing, and other personal effects of the people who were found nearby. The pockmarks in the field are 30 year-old, partially sunken graves. Upon closer inspection, and especially after a good rain, you can see the clothing being burped up from the ground, tattered and bleached by time. Some of the graves are even labeled based on who or what was buried there: Headless bodies, women and children... Shockingly, this genocide, where upwards of 2 million people were systematically murdered, is very rarely discussed. Have you heard of it?
All right, so that’s kind of a big downer to end on. I’ll go on to say that after a day in Phnom Penh Lauren and I took off to Sihanoukville, a beach town about 5 hours from the capital. There we rented a bungalow overlooking the ocean for $12 a night (total) and feasted on fresh fish, octopus on a stick, and beer. After two days of down time at the beach, we returned to Phnom Penh to catch a boat down the Mekong River into Vietnam. We passed from the main river channel into smaller tributaries that make up the Mekong Delta. The smaller rivers were flanked by houses on stilts, farmers wearing conical hats, rice paddy fields, water buffalo, and bathing children. It was so idyllic and serene, it almost made you want to move to Vietnam. Almost.
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