Phnom Penh Day Tour!

Firstly, I am thinking of you all back home on the Big Island with the tsunami destruction that friends have shared with me.....Kona Pier, K-Bay...everybody is in my thoughts and prayers ok.

I had an early start to my day waking up with the two Queensland girl in my dorm room who were getting up at 6am to get an early bus to Siem Reap. I slept quite well on a soft mattress (much harder in Vietnam) and paying a little extra for air conditioning in the room as well.

I met a guy from London last night that had just literally flew in to start his 2 week vacation in SE Asia and we decided to meet for breakfast downstairs at 7am and head out early to explore the sights of Phnom Penh and also try and beat the heat. Hide from Japan also joined us for the morning.

At 7am, the temperature was very VERY pleasant with a slight breeze coming in from the river about 200 meters away from our hostel. We began our walking tour of the city to the place where Phnom Penh got its name from. It’s a temple on a small hill (the highest point in the city at only 27 meters) very close to our hostel and the American embassy. At the base of the hill was also Samba, the resident elephant who you could get rides on.

Walking the riverfront and city after that, I noticed the definite French influence in the architecture. I was impressed with how well the landscaping of the parks in the city was. But the most impressive architecture came when visiting the Royal Palace and Silver Pagoda. The colors of the temples along with the backdrop of a nice blue sky made for beautiful photos today. The temples are so intricate in their design and etchings…truly immaculate! We visited the national museum to see ancient temple artifacts and learn of the traditional culture.

There are men offering motorbike and tuk tuk rides everywhere in the city including visits to the “Killing Fields” (which I already opted not to do) and some kind of place where you could shoot guns???!!!! We headed to the local and central markets for some ethnic food that was delicious consisting of rice noodle soup, vegetables and fish. There is a lot of seafood around probably coming from the river close by.

After lunch, my new friend Ashley and I kept walking to the infamous “S-21” museum in Phnom Penh. I specifically planned to visit this museum at the end of the day since I had been told that it was going to be very heart heavy and intense. S-21 was a former school that the Khmer Rouge leaders turned into a torture area for thousands of Cambodian people suspected of leading an uprising to their ways. The museum has literally left everything the way it was and pretty much just sprayed the blood of victims away. It was absolutely heart wrenching to see the torture chambers made and methods used to such innocent victims.

We headed back to our hostel with a tuk tuk emotionally and physically drained. We have booked an 8:45am bus to Siem Reap tomorrow and escape this big city ready for the calm and serenity that a smaller town and the Angkor Wat temples will hopefully provide.

Goodbye Vietnam...Hello Cambodia!

I had the best last day in Vietnam today and as I sit here in my hostel in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, I am appreciating it even more now.

My afternoon yesterday was spent taking the neighborhood kids including the Doty boys for a walk to get some ice cream down the street. A priceless photo opportunity that I unfortunately missed with all of them with ice cream dripping down their arms and all over their faces :)

We followed that up with an intense game of playground soccer which involved playing off fire hydrants, tree trunks, benches and more! Then we were ready for our night of American Idol!!!!! woooo hoooooooo

Today began with playing UNO FLASH before school with the Doty boys. Its a high tech version of the regular UNO card game which is pretty fun. I got to walk to school with Blair and the kids before saying my farewell.

I tried to avoid the rush hour traffic to get back into the city so went for a very SLOW run around the neighborhood...first time in a while to stretch out the legs was good for me.

I headed into the city in a cab and treated myself for a 1 hour massage at the massage institution down the road from the hostel I stayed at earlier in the week. It is a very special school and the massages are performed by people whom are blind. My massage was incredible and I was so humbled by the experience. It was full body for $3....and I made sure I tipped the lady. I still can't believe how little they charge.

After that, I met my newest Vietnamese friend that I met on my first day sitting at the local market eating lunch. I feel so lucky to have experienced a wonderfully authentic Vietnamese lunch with her topped off with a motorbike ride to the restaurant as well. I got to try and eat my favorite dishes of this country for the last time!

My bus to Cambodia left at 1:30pm and as I stepped on board I realized I had purchased a ticket on a local bus with local Cambodian people on board....very cool! The gentleman taking our passports immediately asked me if I was Cambodian because I looked Cambodian..hahaha Wow!

Anyway, our border crossing was quite smooth about 2 hours into the trip and the highlight of the trip for me was probably crossing the river in the form of the bus pulling in onto the ferry packed like sardines with other vehicles and people and making the 10 minute crossing to the other side.

The Cambodian people on board were so kind, offering me food to eat that they purchased at the stops, specially boiled cobs of corn. I have heard how incredibly kind and friendly Cambodian people are and I am excited to experience the culture.

As we pulled closer into Phnom Penh city, I had mixed feelings about what this place is about. Firstly, I could see the poverty with people squatting and living on roof tops, and trash all over the road. But then, we passed a casino close to the border, a HUGE flashing lights building offering ballroom dancing class, many fast food restaurants like KFC and more.

I was happy to see my name on a sign held up by a friendly smiling Cambodian woman and her 3 year old daughter when I got out of the bus. We hopped on a tuk tuk to get to my hostel for the night. I have a 3 person dorm with A/C and mosquito nets. Hot water was definitely not needed for my shower.

A big day of sightseeing tomorrow to the museums and the night market. I have learned that Cambodia works with the US dollar including with the ATM withdrawals. So you pay in US dollars and get change back in Cambodian Riel.

I have booked myself here for 2 nights but may make it 3 depending on how much I get to see tomorrow.

More soon!

Cu Chi Tunnels & SSIS

So I have quite mixed feelings about my day trip to the Cu Chi Tunnels yesterday and I think they were also shared by the people in my tour group.

Firstly, I felt like I was at some kind of theme park. Seriously, the tour guide pamphlet had a picture of a giant resort style swimming pool on the back. There was a shooting range which you could have your pick of weapons (for a cost of course between $1-$5 depending on the type of gun!). What else, oh yes, one exhibit with mannequins dressed up as Vietnamese fighters allowed you to press a button and the figures moved to show how they made their tools. A another exhibit demonstrated the various traps used to fend off the American soldiers too and I got to eat cassava (a root like vegetable) that was the staple for the Vietnamese at the time because it could be grown easily at the time.

I got the chance to crawl 100 meters into the tunnels which were ingeniously dug out to hide from the American soldiers. Very dark, very narrow in parts and the oxygen levels you could imagine were so small. I learned that people could live below for 20 years and the tunnels extended 200 km! Again, there was definitely a certain amount of propaganda throughout the whole exhibition which was about 1 1/2 hours drive away from HCMC itself.

After returning to HCMC in the afternoon, I successfully navigated my way in a taxi to South Saigon and District 7 where I was going to spend the next two nights with the Doty family in their humble abode. I went for an afternoon bike ride tour with David and the boys passing the school (and Blair walking home from work!), and the neighborhood. The whole area has wide streets and definitely a family style atmosphere with lots of kids playing in the courtyards or riding their bikes. Its so neat to know there are living and working families in such a motorbike city!

This morning I walked to school with Blair and got to spend the morning in her 4th grade classroom at South Saigon International School, as well as meeting many other teachers and join in on her P.E. class too! The school is right next to a river which has a great view and one that Blair has from her classrooms. One of her teacher friend's was so kind to let me hang out at their nearby apartment complex pool for the afternoon which I certainly cherished in the heat!

We have a big American Idol night planned at the Doty hale which I am excited for! I will head back into HCMC tomorrow and get on a bus at 1:30pm to cross the border to Phnom Penh and Cambodia, arriving into the city at around 8pm.

Only one more day as a Millionaire (20,000 Vietnamese Dong = about US $1D), but I think Cambodia has the same massive numerals for the money:)

Mekong Delta Day Trip

What a day....To be honest, I have a little bit of a headache but that's probably from not drinking enough water on this sunny, warm and blue sky of a day here in HCMC!

I got picked up at the hotel by a mini van for my 1 day mekong delta trip. With no idea what to expect, it was about a 1 and a 1/2 hour bus ride to My Tho (pronounced "May Toe"), a bustling hub for the Mekong Delta. The Mekong River begins way up in the Himalayas which is so hard to believe. We then hopped on a little boat to visit a few of the islands inhabited by people in the delta including Phoenix, Turtle, and Unicorn island (yes, all animal names!). Each island specialized in something and we got to walk around and try such specialties such as coconut candy, honey and assorted tropical fruits such as jack fruit, rambutan, and dragon fruit (which I lovvve the look of!). I felt like I ate all morning then we had lunch which was included with the trip. hahaha! I got to ride around Phoenix island after lunch on a bike to explore which was pretty cool too. Then after a few more boat and bus transfers, made it back to HCMC around 4:30pm.

Apart from all of the great sights today, my one highlight today was being able to use my Chinese ('hakka' dialect which is very uncommon as a language itself!) to help an elderly man on our tour who did not speak English. He was frustrating our tour guide because he couldn't communicate with him whether he was doing a one day or two day tour and two day tours got on a different bus to mine. So yes! that made me even more motivated to learn the more common Chinese mandarin dialect.

With that said, here are a few things that I have noted while traveling through SE Asia so far 'looking' like an Asian myself:

- Tour guides, hostel staff, restaurant waiters etc. will always spark more conversation to ask further where my family is from

- There definitely is a different "feeling" when they address/serve me...in a good way! (most of the time!)

-I have even been asked by somebody if I worked at the hostel/hotel once too! haha

I will continue such observations as I travel on.....

I learned something from our great tour guide today. The Vietnamese call the 'Vietnam War', the "American War" and of course, we know that the American's call it the "Vietnam War"...interesting!

So I feel better to mention to everyone now in this blog that one week before I did my Halong Bay tour, an entire junk boat sunk out on the bay taking all the people in it down with the sinking boat. Tragic indeed and I was told this by another backpacker when I was booking my tour. But you just never know right....! such a sad loss of so much life. The government I guess kept everything on the "down low" but also did cancel all halong bay tours for a few days.

Cu chi tunnels trip tomorrow....then sleeping at the Dotys house which I can't wait..I think American Idol is on for us to watch tomorrow night too:) yayyyy!

Day 2 Here I come!

After a nice farewell breakfast with my new friends from Da Nang, I got on my Jetstar flight to the 'big city' -- Ho Chi Minh City. I didn't know what to expect but lots of people and lots of scooters, which also means lots of honking! :)

And I was exactly right ..... HCMC has about 8 million people and the moment I stepped off the plane, I felt the heat and heard the honking.

I got a taxi cab to my hotel downtown ($6) and dumped my stuff in the room ready to get some lunch at the nearby small market since it was about 12 noon. I ended up sitting down next to a very sweet young lady who had very good English. I liked what she was eating and ordered the same thing. We started chatting and she helped me order. I learned she was a professor at a local university in sociology. She ended up treating me to my meal and that was only after I got her to promise me we would meet at the same place for lunch on Friday. By the way, we ate a cold noodle salad topped with greens, and a marinated pork skewer from the BBQ. Also, a 'summer roll' with shrimp but of course, I have no idea how to pronounce it in Vietnamese.

My friends in Da Nang are studying Vietnamese and I looked at their text book this morning. I thought Chinese was hard to learn with 3 tones but the Vietnamese language has 6 tones!

Anyway, after a delightful lunch I headed to scouting out some prices for my next few days of activity. I ended up getting my tours booked with the same lady and company whom gave me a 10% discount because she said it was a "Happy Woman's Day" special. (I've never heard of the holiday??!!!)

So tomorrow I will do a one day Mekong Delta full day trip, Tuesday 1/2 day Cu Chi Tunnels trip, then Friday afternoon get a 6 hour bus to cross the border into Cambodia heading to Phnom Penh.

I walked and walked and walked today, and most importantly, learned a great deal more about this country, especially its war torn history. The first stop was visiting the Reunification Palace (Government House) which is well known for the first communist tanks in Saigon crashing through the front gates in 1975. American's tanks bulldozed the front gates. Everything is exactly how it was the day those tanks rolled in.

After that, I headed to the War Remnants Museum. 3 floors of some deep history including a whole level dedicated to various propaganda from the different countries all over the world protesting against the USA's decision to go to War with Vietnam. Very interesting indeed....There were real US army tanks, bombs, planes, chinooks and more on display. A huge exhibit of real journalist photos taken during the way, tributes to the journalists killed in their profession, an exhibit on the Agent Orange effects, the ruthless 'tiger cages' which prisoners were put in on Phu Quoc island plus much much more. I think I spent about 2 1/2 hours learning in this museum with tears welling up in my eyes often.

O and my statement about not meeting any Americans on my trip so far...Yes, well definitely not the case any more....they are everywhere here in HCMC :)

I wondered through the big Ben Thanh Market after that where again anything and everything you can think of can be purchased. Lots of 'fake' clothing too which I am tempted but resisting well to buy.

My highlight of the day though was at 5pm and meeting up with dear HPA friends David Doty and his two sons (whom I haven't seen for 3 years!) Mum had a meeting at school so couldn't make it but I was spoiled to be treated to an Indian dinner together (which was really really good too!). I will have a little adventure on my hands and try to get to their apartment on my own via taxi on Wednesday afternoon. I look forward to staying with them on Wed. and Thurs. night!

Sore feet...maybe I should check out the blind massage school down the road to treat myself...it's meant to be amazing!

One word for this city === ELECTRIFYING!!!!

Hoi An by Day, BEACH, and Homestay in Danang

I did end up using my mosquito net in the middle of the night, more from being paranoid that I was going to get bitten though. I rose early and checked out of the hostel at 8am so I could see Hoi An by day. I was greeted to a beautiful, warm, blue sky today and the little town was just as sweet and quaint as I thought it would be after my last night's welcome.

It did seem quite a slow day which made sense as somebody reminded me that it was Sunday! Also, I learned from a local that last night was busy because it was the 15th of the month and this date is celebrated each calendar month with activity and lantern lighting on the river. Bonus!:)

Hoi An's local market was wonderful to wonder around. There was variety of every kind in terms of eggs, noodles, fruits, vegetables etc. (It was mainly a produce market). My "Lonely Planet" restaurant recommendations were positive as I found a wonderful little vegetarian joint they said was "worth trying to find" in the back alley streets. The owner spoke great English and I chatted with him as he loaded up my plate full of home made vegetarian foods with rice for lunch. By the way, somebody joked with me the other day that it was more like "Crowded Planet" and I agreed because it seems that everybody just goes off the book and I'd rather find my own way around....at least for food. I do enjoy the little write up in the beginning section of each country though.

I had a couple of hours to kill before my bus for Da Nang arrived so decided to hire a bike and bike to the beach about 5 km away. It was great to stretch the legs out too and see the ocean! There were not many people swimming, but the palm trees were swaying and people were having fun in the sun! Da Nang has about 1.1 million people and is certainly a fast growing city. I think the government see's this potential of growth and tourists with its beaches, nearly Marble Mountains, and close proximity to Hoi An and Hue. There is a massive sports complex in the middle of the city and also giant resorts and houses popping up by the beach front. Time will tell I guess but its looking good!

My new friends (from yesterday's bus ride) met me at the bus stop in Da Nang and it was such a delight to see them. Their apartment is very very modern on the top 4th floor with 2 balconies, a great kitchen, 2 bedrooms and a bathroom. They are so very kind to let me stay and Jeanette and I walked the Da Nang beach for about an hour in the afternoon. Lots of locals were having fun at the beach too and I agree with them that it was the best way to spend a Sunday afternoon. The temperature right now is just perfect!

I've met so many people already on my trip so I've decided that I would like to blog about certain individuals I have met on particular days. If I was really on it, I would like to take a photo of them too.

Anyway, so this morning at breakfast I started talking to two Norwegian girls whom were traveling throughout SE Asia and just finished Africa. They were both so nice and told me that I could stay with them anytime I was in Norway. One of the girls boyfriend's is native Kenyan too. So very cool!

Off to the 'big city' tomorrow ---- Ho Chi Minh City (8 million) ....I don't know what to expect. I will meet the Doty family in the afternoon too and am soooo excited!

Hoi An Heaven....

To begin my day, I joined the part 2 of my Hue city day tour by visiting 3 royal tombs from various dynasties. At the hotel's breakfast, I met a lovely elderly couple from Australia who were also in the group. "Auntie" Vien was vietnamese too so it was fun to get some language lessons from her.

Our first stop was an incense making and conical hat making village. It was fascinating to watch and the conical hat is distinguished in Hue city as "poem hats" where they tell a story through pictures on the hat. We then headed to the royal tombs. We got to pick and choose which tombs we wanted to enter since they were 55,000 Viet. dong (about $3) to enter each. I got some tips from folks I met yesterday that two of them were similar so I waited outside for an hour to one of them while the others who wanted to enter did so.

While waiting, I met a fun Portuguese speaking, South African born, London living guy (how's that for culture...I loved it!). We were heading in opposite directions so exchanged the names of hostels/hotels we liked and recommended. I finished up my tour and got on the 3 hour bus ride to Hoi An.

On that bus ride, I met a lovely couple from the UK whom had just recently moved to Da Nang (the big city stop on the way to Hoi An town). They had just finished up 9 years living and working in Kathmandu. Since my flight to Saigon is early Monday morning, they offered for me to stay the night at their place in Da Nang tomorrow night so I wouldn't have to get up so early to get a 45 min. bus to the Da Nang airport (Hoi An does not have an airport). What lovely and generous folks and so I am taking them up on their offer and will meet them tomorrow afternoon at the bus station and stay the night with them. I am looking forward to their company and know that they will have some amazing stories from their 'abroad' life.

Here in Hoi An....I am literally in food and clothing heaven. The prom girls at school would just die....as dresses, suits, skirts, shoes, you name it are all tailor made for you with your measurements...ranging from $20-$50...you get what you pay for I hear! And the food, I had dinner of delicious "cao do" noodles (a specialty food in Hoi An which is doughy flat rice noodles in a broth with sprouts, greens and topped with sliced pork) and passion fruit and chocolate mousse dessert for $2.50 tonight...amazing! I can see how and why so many people love it here.

The town itself is small...only about 130,000 people. But it's definitely a lively little one especially at night which I just experienced. The lights come on in town and the riverfront has giant animal floats along it. The smell of bbq'd meats on the grill and the sound of laughter in the air definitely gives it some flair and I look forward to experiencing it during the day tomorrow.

With that thought, I have three realizations thus far into my 9 days of traveling so far

1. I have NOT met one single American traveler

2. Vietnamese people don't really wear sunglasses

3. I saw my BLUE sky today. Gone are the warm clothes needed in Northern Vietnam and Hello to the tank tops and mosquitos (Yes, I have a mosquito net in my room tonight)