From Cambodia to Vietnam, and other random thoughts

Hi everyone! Thanks again for all the comments and support, especially in face of my blog's identity crisis...

Laura and I have had a few days of serious traveling and now find ourselves (somewhat) comfortably ensconced in Ho Chi Minh City/Saigon for a few days. Talk about name identity crisis, this city definitely understands my plight. It's name has officially been Ho Chi Minh City since 1975, with the district containing the original french city (district 1) remaining "Saigon." But to confuse matters, most locals still call the whole city Saigon. In any case, a rose by any other name would still smell as sweet I guess... but Saigon does not smell sweet. It smells like street vendors, Pho, and motorbikes. So many motorbikes! (Although I guess technically they contribute more to the sound than the smell).

I remember being shocked when I got to Amsterdam and saw how many bikes they had. This experience is the same all over, but with vespas. This is fine, if you're on one of the bikes. As a pedestrian, however, its a disaster. First of all, half of the sidewalks (the ones that haven't been turned into mini restaurants or other types of roadside stalls) seem to have become moto parking lots. Furthermore, the rules of traffic seem to only be very vague recommendations here and thus the flow of traffic is a constantly chaotic mix of everyone going at once and narrowly avoiding each other. Reaching our first intersection last night as Laura and I left the hostel in search of dinner was a pretty sad site. Here we were on one side of the street, and there was the other side, so close, and yet, so far. All that lay between us was 6 lanes of traffic (which means about 18 lane of bikes). We studied the situation for a few minutes, saw some other brave souls nonchalantly wander out into the traffic and finally decided to follow suit. I'm happy to report that so far so good.

To recap the last few days, on Saturday we got to Phnem Penh exhausted and hot and then had to find a new place to stay as our hostel had lost our reservation. This pretty much killed our afternoon, but luckily the boat to Chau Doc on Sunday didn't leave until 1 so we had Sunday morning to see the city a bit. We first tried to go to the national palace/museum, however I had not realized that there was a dress code and my sleeveless shirt was considered inappropriate. Cutting our losses we realized that neither of us cared that much anyway, and headed to our next stop Tuol Sleng, Pol Pot's secret prison and now a torture museum of the Khmer Rouge. The whole thing worked out well as we ended up spending much more time there than anticipated, and also both learned a great deal about the regime which we had been somewhat confused about before, despite reading up on it briefly. Such an incredibly tragic story. Since we didn't have enough time left after TS and before our boat to go to another tourist attraction, we decided to get ice cream to cool down (a rather frequent decision) and ended up at the Foreign Correspondents Club which is apparently a classic institution in PP, and I can see why. The club has a lovely piece of real estate n the third floor of a beautiful old building overlooking the river. The height means that there's consistently a nice breeze and beautiful view, and the club means that there are consistently expats and smoothie seekers such as ourselves. It's amazing the difference a good smoothie can make on a hot day.

The boat ride to Vietnam was uneventful, as was the border crossing. Finally we ended up in Chau Doc and after disembarking were shocked to realize that tuk tuk drivers do not exist everywhere in the region. In fact, instead of the accustomed brigade of drivers trying to sell you a ride as soon you get off a boat or bus, there was simply a lone cyclo driver (a cyclo is a little wagon either pulled or pushed by a person on a bicycle, the wagon being MUCH smaller than what we were accustomed to on our tuk tuks). While we protested that we wanted to stay together and that we could not both fit on one cyclo and started to walk, we soon realized how far we were from the center of town. The driver insisted he could take both of us, and our packs, so we gave in. I wish I could have gotten a good picture of what we must have looked like, both crammed onto this precarious perch, bags and all, weaving in and out of traffic. He took us to the wrong hostel, however it was very nice and for $13 we got a room with ac/hot water and balcony plus free breakfast, so we took it.

Monday morning we took advantage of our location in the Mekong delta and went, along with another backpacker whom we befriended, for a three-hour tour of floating villages etc. with the cutest/funniest Vietnamese woman. She also spoke no English whatsoever. It's amazing how much you can convey through pantomime. We went to a floating market, which is essentially a collection of moored houseboats full of commodities like pineapples and bananas. Next was a floating village in which the houses all actually float on the river. The ingenious part of this is that these people are all fish farmers. They keep nets under there houses and grow fish in them, feeding them through holes on the floor daily. Truly a brilliant system. Finally we went to a Cham minority village where the people and saw a woman hand weaving silk-scarves as well as the village mosque. Altogether a fascinating morning, despite the extreme heat.

We got back from our tour at around 10:30 and had until 1 before our bus picked us up to head to HCMC, so we decided to explore the town market and get some lunch (after recovering in the AC a bit). The markets here are all fascinating and full of so many sites and smells (some delicious, some less so) that we were a bit overwhelmed, and unfortunately no one speaks English, so many things are often a mystery. We gathered our courage and used our noses and for about $3 ended up with a big bag of lychees and clementines, a bunch of coconut pastries of some sort, a roll of sticky rice, bean paste, and what later turned out to be pig fat (blech) all wrapped in a banana leaf, roasted plantains, fried duck strips (delicious), and bananas wrapped in sticky rice and baked (SO good). This managed to be both our lunch and our afternoon snack, though by the time we got to HCMC we were both suffering a bit of indigestion from so many new and interesting items. The bus ride in general probably didn't hurt either. The huge number of motorbikes on the road actually makes traveling in a car somewhat difficult and the minibus was forced to speed up only to slow down numerous times, creating quite a jerky ride, set to the background tunes of some crooning Vietnamese singer or other. The other passengers were also all Vietnamese and no one spoke any English, meaning that we didn't really know what was going on most of the time, but the woman sitting next to me seemed to have our backs, and warned us that when the doors suddenly opened and people on the streets tried to sell things to those in the car, we should watch our bags. Needless to say, we were both quite thrilled to be done with that part of our "overland"-ing adventure.

Today we explored the city a bit on foot, though we nearly did ourselves in due to the heat. We first tried to go to the Reunification Palace, only to find that it's closed for the next couple of days. No matter, the War Remnants Museum was practically next store. This museum, which I believe was formerly called the war crimes museum or something, basically documented the Vietnam War from their perspective, or actually the War of American Aggression. Many of the photos were chilling, especially those showing the horrific birth defects due to Agent Orange spraying. Unfortunately the Museum closes between 12-1:30 (which we were unaware of) so we didn't see the whole thing, but enough to get a gist. The story they told was obviously very one-sided, but also interesting as it was a side which we had never heard. The whole ordeal seems to have been such a tragedy for all involved.

After being kicked out we spent the rest of the day wandering about to various sites and trying not to pass out. We sought shelter at the HCMC history museum, but it turned out that that was not a) air-con b) in posession of benches so we walked around rather quickly and that crashed at a cute little coffee shop where we ordered both a green tea ice cream to share and mocha frapuccinos. It was brilliance.


Some thoughts on Food and Toilets:

Food=AMAZING. everywhere. I haven't written about it much because I'm trying to get away from my reputation of always writing about/talking about food. But seriously, its all been SO GOOD. and so cheap! The Cambodian/Khmer food was especially delicious and cheap, especially the street food. They made this vegetable soup that Laura and I were both obsessed with, we're still not sure what the mystery ingredient was, though we suspect lemongrass. However Vietnamese has also been great so far, especially the vietnamese crepes that you wrap in lettuce that we had for lunch. We have yet to try true street food, though with so many stalls and little tables on the street, and so many positive experiences in Thailand and Cambodia, I think tomorrow we will take the leap.

Toilets=LTI (that's less than ideal, for those not in the know). The ones in the hostels we've stayed at have all been fine as we've had ensuite bathrooms, but an unfortunate aspect of being in the heat all day is guzzling water in order to stay hydrated. Unfortunately, public toilets do not seem to be a top priority here, and toilet paper is NEVER provided. Suffice it to say that every time I think I've been to a bathroom one that is the worst yet, there's another waiting to take its place. The current winner was somewhere on the bus trip from Chau Doc to HCMC in which we had to PAY to use a "bathroom" that was a hot, smelly, little tiled room with a DRAIN in the corner. I'm not kidding. There was also a bucket of water and a scoop. The others have mostly been squat toilets (also called turkish toilets) which are fine, however the rooms they're located in are often repulsive. We douse ourselves quite regularly with CVS hand sanitizer.

Along the same vein, I've been meaning to mention that since leaving Siem Reap, all of our showers are of a new design..or rather lack thereof. It seems that the standard model here is to create a bathroom with a sloped floor and a drain on one end. This way, a shower head can be stuck anywhere in the bathroom, and presto, you've got a shower! So what if it's over the toilet....