February 13th - Day 65

Goodbye Vietnam...Hello Cambodia!

 

For the last 2 days in HCMC we moved to the Rex Hotel so that we would be closer to the bus operators that take you to Cambodia.  This old 5 star hotel was used by reporters during the Vietnam War and a lot of the stories they wrote were written here.  And, it has great rooftop views of District 1’s boulevards filled with the Tet illuminations.  It was my birthday, and the hotel presented me with a bunch of flowers and a lovely birthday cake with my name on it.  It was a really nice surprise.  We dined on the rooftop of the Rex as a double celebration, not only was it my birthday but it was our last night in Vietnam too (60 very memorable and enjoyable days).  They had a Vietnamese band on who played Latin music, strangely enough, while we sipped cocktails and ate some delicious steaks cooked to perfection. 

The next morning I had my last proper pho for breakfast (a noodle soup I think is delicious) and got a taxi to the bus station.  The bus took 6 hours to get to Phnom Penh crossing the border through 2 checkpoints, one Vietnamese and one Cambodian.  As soon as we entered Cambodia, we could tell we were in another country.  The buildings were adorned with fancy roofs and unfamiliar Khmer script.  The roads were dustier and potholed.  The bus came to the occasional abrupt halt to allow passing cattle to stroll across the roads.  The land looked flatter and more baron with children and cattle (but not together!) bathing in muddy watering holes along the way.  The bus stopped at a small town to cross a river just before we reached Phnom Penh.  The bus was quickly surrounded by street hawkers offering deep fried critters as snacks in baskets balanced on their heads.  Apparently during Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge Regime in the seventies, whilst the people were starving to death they were forced through hunger to eat such things as tarantulas and acquired a liking for them so they still eat them to this day but we were not that hungry funnily enough! 

As we drove through the huge capital (home to 2 million people) the roads widened and we saw some amazing ornate buildings between shops, restaurants and businesses.  The roads are all numbered so it makes it easy to navigate around as well which is a blessing as the Khmer language is difficult to decipher.  We were dropped off at the bus depot and we haggled for a tuk-tuk to take us to the hotel on street 128 which was just outside the main tourist area but easily within walking distance to most sites. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If we thought it was hot in HCMC, we were mistaken...it is about 37’c here and the sun is baking hot.  We walked towards the quay and found a restaurant that looked inviting.  We had beer at $0.75 (even though the currency is Riel most places deal in US Dollars) and I had chicken amok (spicy chicken coconut curry served in a banana leaf) and Waffle had pork loc lac (pork in a pepper sauce using peppers from Kampot in Cambodia which is famous for it’s peppercorns worldwide).  The food was plentiful, full of flavour and quite spicy. Although, the street food looks less inviting, more like salmonella on a plate with meat and seafood just sitting there in the heat of the sun...no thanks!

As the population is 90% Buddhist it was no surprise to see monks donned in orange robes with orange umbrellas.  They were holding pots waiting outside our hotel for offerings of food from the staff as we ate our breakfast.  When they received food, they chanted some blessing to the staff and moved on.  What we didn’t expect to see were monks smoking cigarettes or sitting pillion on motorbikes!  We thought they couldn’t smoke as they should really indulge in things, they are not even supposed to enjoy eating food.  We got a tuk-tuk to the Royal Palace only to find that it was closed until 2 pm...so we wandered along until then taking in the sites.  One place we wandered into was Wat Onalom.  This was one of the oldest temples in the city and had several buildings, one was the sleeping quarters of the Dalai.  All the buildings were extremely ornate and very beautiful.  A monk showed us around and explained about where the gongs and furniture came from as well as what goes on in each building, he even let us strike the gongs and play on the drums!  He seemed very pleased to show us around the temple and when I took a photo of him he even straightened up his robes and posed for me!

 After visiting the Wat we walked through a side street full of big green rubbish bins where homeless families lived.  The children were rummaging through the bins and were playing in the street, some of them unclothed.  This was the poverty here we had heard about and was very sad to see what little they had.  The children come up to you begging for money and follow you along the road tugging at your clothes.  They are also notorious pick-pockets too so you have to be on your guard! 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We came across the National Museum where they were practicing an Apsara dance show for the evening.  Being cheapskates, we watched the show for free instead of paying $18 each later.  The girls danced first and it looked like the dance told a story of harvesting rice in paddy fields and bringing it to the men who joined in on the dancing and the storyline continued.  The men then started to dance using monkey actions in the routine which was funny to see a dance involving scratching their asses!  It was good fun, a little girl about 3 years old who was watching them tried to copy the dance.

At 2pm we walked back to the Royal Palace.  A young friendly boy who spoke to us earlier remembered us and convinced us to buy some water from him instead of paying more inside, we agreed after negotiating a good price (we would rather give him the money anyway).  The Palace was a lot bigger than we expected.  It was full of well maintained gardens surrounding gold and white buildings, stupas and walkways adorned with murals.  We also walked through a few water sprinklers meant for the grass and plants - just to cool us down in the searing heat.  Within the walls of the Palace grounds was the Silver Pagoda which had a silver tiled floor and more Buddha statues than you could imagine...all sizes and positions from lying down, sitting, standing, gold, silver, jade, diamond encrusted etc. etc.  I actually heard Waffle say wow a few times at the Palace (which is something as he isn’t impressed easily).

 

 

 

 

 

 

After walking around for hours and getting a little sunburnt we went for something to eat.  We sat down at a table close to a big fan and perused the menu.  The menu was a bit strange with stuff like cows tongue with red ants and various cooking methods for intestines but we found some soups to be a more to our taste...It was supposed to be a light afternoon snack but it turned out to be a feast...the soups came in huge bowls and had rice to accompany them, peanuts and fresh pineapple to end.  We were stuffed so we skipped tea that day.

The next day we walked to the Independence Monument set on a large roundabout by all the main embassies. Then we walked to the other side of the city to Wat Phnom to which the city takes its name.  Grandma Penh founded the Wat in 1373 on the only hill in the city after finding 4 Buddha statues along the Mekong River. Phnom means ‘hill’ hence the name Phnom Penh.  Just outside the Wat Waffle found a friend...an elephant named Sumbo.  He bought some bananas and after feeding him he gave him a bit of a hug around his trunk...the highlight to his day (Waffles that is, not Sumbos!).  Next we went to one of the shopping malls and at the top floor we watched some young Cambodians rollerblading in a cage doing loads of stunts like somersaults and backward flips.  It was getting late so we found a restaurant for some beer and nosh.  The owner, who was very giggly said that if we could manage 3 jugs of beer she would give us some bbq food for free but we only managed 2!  Every time we took a sip of beer they came and topped our glasses up – very attentive I must say...We ordered some food and after we ate what we ordered and some of the peanuts they kept giving us they brought us free desserts, green noodles in coconut milk (they were really nice).  They really want to make you feel welcome and well fed here.  When we got back to our hotel the extremely happy tuk-tuk driver who parks outside our hotel (never seems to stop smiling) offered to take us to the Killing Fields the next day so we arranged that for 10 am, just after breakfast.

At breakfast the tuk-tuk driver waved and smiled at us through the window and when we stepped outside he seemed overjoyed to take us out for the day for $14.  He took us to Toul Sleng Museum first.  This used to be a school before Pol Pot took control, who turned it into a torture prison called S-21.  A horrific site of electrified beds, small cells and various methods of torture given to people who were educated, skilled, infirm (including people who wore glasses), ‘traitors’ of the Khmer Rouge Regime, foreigners, religious people and just about anyone really.  Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge carried out a program that included isolating the country from foreign influence, closing schools, hospitals and factories, abolishing banking, finance and currency, outlawing all religions, confiscating all private property and relocating people from urban areas to collective farms where forced labour was widespread. These actions resulted in massive deaths through executions, work exhaustion, illness, and starvation. At S-21 14,000 prisoners were held here before being sent to the Killing Fields to be slaughtered within a day of arrival...That was next on our itinerary.

The Killing Fields, or Choeung Ek is 15km south of the city so we were taken along dirt roads passing small hamlets and stilt homes along waterways.  At the Killing Fields, a memorial stands 17 tiers high of bones from some of the mass graves excavated in the area.  As we walked through the grounds passing the ditches we could see clothing still half buried and we even saw a guy pulling up some bone fragments and laying them by a tree which was used to smash babies up against to kill them, now a small shrine in their memory.  They estimate that about 20,000 are buried here in shallow graves and when it rains more bones and clothes are exposed!  We watched a film there that showed more horrifying images that occurred during the 1970s.  The 4 top officials are still yet to be tried for these war crimes, only one accepts and apologises for his actions.  Pol Pot died of a suspected heart attack in 1998 under house arrest aged 73 so justice has not been done as yet for the killing, starving and torture of 1 in 5 Cambodians, an estimated 2 million people.

We had a rest back at the hotel and went out for our final night in Phnom Penh.  We went to a restaurant on the quay which was a bit more expensive than some of them and when it came to the bill, Waffle realised he hadn’t brought enough money with him...he had no choice but to dash back to the hotel and get some more cash, he ran all the way.  He was asked if he wanted a tuk-tuk and a free woman!  He declined and continued to run on...when he came back to the restaurant he looked shattered as he had run about 2 miles and all for being a dollar short! 

This morning we got our tuk-tuk friend to take us to the bus terminal for our onward journey to the beach resort of Sihanoukville.  We pre-booked a hotel close to the beach with a big swimming pool too.  We are going to spend a few days topping our tans up.  The bus ride was very comfortable, 4 hours along a newly laid tarmac road.  They had a TV and put on Ice Age 2 and Resident Evil to watch.  After a bit of a rest (it’s surprising how tired sitting on a bus makes you) we are going to go out and explore the town.

January 24th 2011 – Day 45

Same same, but different!



marble mountains



We checked out and left Danang for Hoi An.  It is only 30km away to Hoi An so we took a taxi.  On the way we stopped off at the Marble Mountains, which legend says was formed when a dragon laid an egg there and when it hatched the broken shells grew into the mountains!  Today though, it has been heavily excavated and much of the marble used is bought in from China but the marble work is still impressive all the same.  There are a few pagodas including another multi-tiered tower and caves that can be explored but we did not go to them.

We arrived in Hoi An, a historic trading port in the 16^th & 17^th Century by the afternoon.  After we settled in we walked into the ancient area by the river and it was easy to see why it is loved by many.  The streets are very quaint, the buildings are mainly painted yellow with French colonial style mahogany balconies and Chinese style roofing.  The humidity and daily floods taint the walls with dark damp patches which adds to the old look. 

A Japanese covered bridge crosses a small waterway in the old quarter and there are loads of characteristic buildings, so many that our eyes were everywhere!  The river is lined with boats of different sizes but they all have eyes painted on the front to protect them from the evil water serpents. 

There are over 400 tailor shops which is quite a few considering it is a small town, and every one you pass try to get you in.  The favourite saying in Vietnam is 'Same, same, but different' which we have heard many times especially here in Hoi An.  Many of the buildings have silk lanterns hanging around (you can see them being made in some of the shops) and unfortunately for us, on the 14^th day of every lunar month the town shuts off the electricity and the whole town is lit up with even more lanterns, we missed this by one day!  Still, they have plenty of lanterns around and were getting ready for the Tet New Year Festival so it was still very pretty at night, we didn’t feel like we missed much...

The night time became a romantic place to stroll along the river (avoiding the parts where the river rises above its banks and floods the streets each night) and the people are extremely welcoming. 

We ate at the local food quarter at a place owned by a Mr Linh and his family where his sister, Yip and her aunt Bai (not sure if spelling is correct) were overjoyed to say the least that we chose to eat at their stand.  Bai gave me a few dabs of methol oil to try that she had (it was dark green in a very small bottle that smelled like it had eucalyptus in as well which I thought may be a good mozy repellent too).  The food as usual was great, we tried the local dishes called ‘White Rose’ (pork and shrimp balls surrounded by a large soft noodle in the shape of a rose!) and ‘Cao Lao’ (fat noodles with pork and crispy squares that tasted like pork scratching, yummy).  Local beer is just 16 pence a pint too and rounded off the night nicely.

With water comes mosquitos, and we were bitten in the night even though we sprayed ourselves to stop them.  We woke up to big, itchy lumps on our legs that drove us mad for hours at a time.   

We walked out of Hoi An’s main area and passed people working in paddy fields and homes with chicken coops and cattle tied to stakes in the ground.  Everyone waves and says hello as you pass their homes so you really feel comfortable wandering out of the main areas.  We came to an open road a guessed we had gone as far on foot as we wanted to and walked back down a dirt track along the river.

Back in the town we stopped off for a bite to eat, the lady who owned the restaurant we tried recommended the fish in banana leaf and we were glad she did because it was excellent.   We heard drums close by as we ate which turned out to be a Buddhist shrine that had monks in orange gear and other people decked out in white clothes and white headbands (looked like they all had bandages due to head injuries!).  We eventually caved in and were drawn in to a tailors that was recommended to us...We both ended up ordering some clothes which we had to go back the next day for a fitting (too good to miss - we got tailored outfits including for our forthcoming wedding, even though the date isn’t set yet!).  Our clothes were adjusted and was ready for collection after just 48 hours of picking the design and fabric!

Before we collected our outfits we went for a cooking lesson.  This was a lot of fun, we had the restaurant to ourselves and we chose what we wanted to cook.  A lady demonstrated what to do and then we copied.  We chopped, mixed, stuffed and cooked (jotting down notes along the way) – Vietnamese fried spring rolls with pork and shrimps, whole fish stuffed with chilli and lemongrass wrapped in a banana leaf cooked on charcoal, stir fried vegetables in garlic and beef noodle soup.  After we cooked it, we ate it...it was delicious even though I do say myself (Waffles spring rolls were better than mine though)! 

We collected our clothes and dropped them off at the hotel and had a rest for a while.  We ate at the local food quarter one more time at a stall next to the first one we went to.  Bai fromMr Linh's came up to me and gave me a hug and some more perfumed oil to put behind my ears! She kept shaking my hand, smiling and patting me on the back for ages...the folk here seem very affectionate.

The next day we went on a trip to My Son which is a collection of about 70 Cham Towers built over 1,000 years ago.  The Cham structures were built by Hindus from India and include statues of gods  – Shiva, Vishnu & Apsara etc.  




relics with hole where bomb dropped in 1969

 Our guide (who was a really funny character - very loud, abrubtly spoken and told amusing tales) told us that in 1969, the Yanks bombed this area believing that the Viet Cong were hiding there so only a few structures remained intact.  His father was a VC and said that he was one too!  After he ridiculed the Americans at war for always getting it wrong he asked if  there were Americans on the tour (Not many put their hands up)!  

After we spent a couple of hours walking around (avoiding the mined areas) we took a boat back to Hoi An, stopping off at a village that specialised in carpentry – there they were making boats, huge mahogany statues and mother of pearl inlayed furniture.  The woodwork was very intricate and some used their feet to hold the wood as they worked.

Our last full day in Hoi An and yet another power cut for 12 hours this time (lost count how many now).  Luckily, the generators allow the internet to work in the reception so we went down and booked 2 hotels in Ho Chi Minh City (one cheap for a week and one for the Tet  New Year a bit more up market with a swimming pool - 4 1/2 star so we are hoping it is good).  

us with our new found friends Yip & Bai
(me wearing the shawl Bai gave me earlier)

Waffle fancied a beef hotpot (cooked at the table) at our favourite local food stall so we went there again and as we walked past the other stalls (about 25 of them) one lady asked us to eat at her stall.  We said we were eating at Mr Linh's at the other end and before we knew it the message was passed down the stalls to let everyone know we were going there!  (Even though they are all individual stalls, they all help each other and do not fight for competition, they even help each other with the food!).  As we got to Mr Linh's, Bai greeted us with open arms and gave us more presents to take away...I had already been given a pashmina shawl earlier in the day by her and Waffle now was given 2 silk ties.  It did not stop there either, as we ate our food she then pushed 2 small boxes into my hand which turned out to be bottles of the perfumed oil she had been dabbing on me everytime she saw me.  Then she bought some sugared peanuts from a street hawker and put some in a dish for us and at the end of our meal she gave us some fruit.  They made us feel very at home there and to see this hospitality was extremely humbling and very sweet. As we had chatted to them about their family we found out that Yip's husband works long hours as a chef in a local hotel for only about £46 per month! 

From today it’s going to be hot, hot, hot...yippee!!  We fly teatime with Jetstar Airways for just £15 each...just hope it isn’t like Ryanair but it is only for 1 1/4 hours.  We will be sad to leave this town, it is so beautiful and the people have been very friendly...we will have some great memories of our stay here...

(all our photos have moved to our 'Windows Live' account as we maxed out the flickr pictures on our free account!)

 so here is the link to the latest ones on Windows live - Hoi An pictures

January 17th 2011 – Day 38

No dice!

Waffle at war museum

The outer part of the Citadel was a little disappointing.  The streets were nowhere near as interesting as in Hanoi and had little to offer tourists, maybe Hanoi has spoilt us a little but we expected the streets to have ancient buildings being as though it was an ancient city!  The only thing that we came across of interest was the war museum which had US army tanks and artillery from the ‘American War’ from 1965 to 1973 (or as we know it, the Vietnam War). 

Remedy for a headache maybe?

After leaving the Citadel we walked along the river lined with dragon boats.  The original dragon boats were used in masses along the river at festival times but these ones were just used to take tourists to some of the pagodas further down the river, a bit of a tourist trap to be honest.  Shops faced the river which had some interesting medicine shops selling all kinds of herbs and animals cured in large jars – frogs, snakes, ginseng roots etc.  They looked like some kind of mad scientist’s laboratory.

train track through Hue

The next day we decided to find the train station on our side of the river.  We got our tickets, seats 1 & 2 on coach 1 on the 14^th (sounds simple but I will explain more later!).   To our surprise we found the south side of the river had some better streets to amble along, they seemed more like what we expected in the citadel and were peppered with pagodas. 

tower at Tu Dam Pagoda

There was one (Tu Dam Pagoda) which is used by the monks for training today and has a multi-tiered high tower which is the official symbol of Hue.  Each tier is said to represent the stages of ascension to heaven by Buddha.  Here, a monk burned himself in 1963 in protest to the oppressive administration (not the monk however who drove the famous blue Austin to Saigon to set himself alight also in 1963 though).  A smaller river crossed through this area with a local food market to one side including live birds in small baskets (brings a new image of ‘chicken in a basket’!).  

'chicken in a basket'

We ate at a recommended local restaurant called Nina’s Cafe in the evening.  This was hidden in a backstreet, it had a roof but no walls!  The food was very tasty and larger portions than some of the restaurants so we were very stuffed by the end of it.  Huge bowls of rice soup, squid with pineapple, grilled minced pork wraps, spring rolls, shrimps in garlic...and the obligatory sticky rice of course! 

Back at the hotel, I had a bit of a mishap...all the bathrooms have a shower hose next to the toilet which I wanted to use to wash away our muddy footprints.  As I tried to pick it up the shower head broke off and freezing cold water jetted up spraying all over the bathroom and me with no tap to turn it off!  Waffle came to my rescue after he heard me shouting him in panic and turned off the main water tap to the room.  I looked like a drowned rat!  Waffle told the receptionist what had happened, a guy then zipped off on a motorbike and returned with a replacement hose and it was fixed in a jiffy.

So, the day of the train...We boarded the train, coach 1 and looked for seats 1 & 2...The coach was very narrow and we had our big backpacks on that made it very difficult to manoeuvre.  The first seats were 63 & 64 then 3 & 4, 5 & 6 etc.   So where were our seats?  We were being pushed forward by the locals (they always push and pull, you have to get used to that) and the numbers just kept going up, we got about 3/4 ‘s of the way down the carriage when the ticket inspector saw our tickets and pointed back the way we came!  We turned around, knocking people over with our backpacks and edged our way passed people coming from the opposite direction back to the start...The same inspector, now behind us looked at our tickets again and point back the way we came...we were getting very agitated and hot at this point and an old lady pushed Waffle out the way making him very annoyed.  We had no choice but to turn around again and go back up the carriage.  Eventually we found our seats next to 61 & 62, how crazy is that!  A local guy helped us put our bags up on the racks which were full by that time and we finally got to sit down.  There was a family in front of us with several large shopping bags full of food enough to feed the whole carriage, they did not stop eating all the way!  The couple next to us who could not speak any English at all also found this amusing and they tried to chat with us along the way, laughing about the hungry family and trying to find out where we were going etc.  They also got the food trolley guy to show us the food he had hidden under newspapers so that we could eat (a favourite Vietnamese pastime).  He showed us a nice chicken drumstick and said ‘Chicken?’ so we said OK...he then put the drumstick back and passed us 2 very small roasted birds about the size of quails with heads and claws still attached!  Not quite the drumsticks we thought we were going to have.  This is something we are still trying to get used to..however much you think you understand what to expect i.e. seat numbers and food etc, it is always a surprise!  Just as we were about to eat, the train went through a long tunnel and plunged us into complete darkness.  The ride took us through several long dark tunnels and popped out the other side exposing some stunning views of the coast and the mountains and we could see the weather changing, getting sunnier!

football on streets of Danang

 We arrived at Danang and the sun was shining as we walked towards our hotel stopping off along the way for a coffee and to check our map.  Eventually we got to our hotel which was styled in a Louis XIV French style with ornate plasterwork, vintage telephones and chandeliers, very nice!  At breakfast a man who looked like Charles Bronson (although loads here seem to resemble Charles Bronson around the city – we have spotted at least 5 lookalikes!) passed us the menu in Vietnamese with a crude English translation that was amusing and confusing – what is bread sunny, wheat incited and waivers?  As it turns out bread sunny is a baguette and two fried eggs, waiver is a beef egg noodle soup and we haven’t found out what wheat incited is but we know it has beef in it! 

Danang bridge at night

Danang isn’t really a tourist area, it is a large city that was used by the US Army for R & R during the war with beaches stretching all the way to Hoi An and loads of wide streets full of tailors, electricals, and all manner of shops.  At night the streets are filled with light displays like Blackpool, I guess this is in preparation for Tet New Year.  The bridge is lit up as well but these lights look more permanent and makes an evening stroll along the river very pleasant.

Central Vietnam has a Cham community still in existence (The ancient Cham empire from 1,600 years ago is Hindu influenced which is apparent in the statues and artwork seen in some of the restaurants and some temples).  We went to a museum in Danang containing many artefacts depicting Hindu type gods, demons and dancing girls. 









how long is that trailer!!



The day we chose to go to the beach was not the best of days weather wise.  We crossed the bridge and headed to the coast but as we got closer the rain started to beat down.  From what we saw, it was lined with palm trees (not much else) and the waves looked good for surfing but we didn’t stay around and trudged back to the city soaking wet.  On the way back we saw a guy on a motorbike towing a 40ft trailer with a corrugated metal sheet on it... it’s amazing what and how they transport stuff here! 

There is a large supermarket near our hotel so we thought we would do a bit of local food shopping!  We bought some precooked meals and a roast chicken to snack on.  It gave us chance to see what they eat at home although the chocolates are poor and the cakes are worse, I do miss Cadbury’s chocolates...

One thing we are noticing is how much more friendly they as we move more south are (even though they are still friendly in the north) but on the other hand how little English is spoken here as well.  The people and especially all the children say hello and wave but they can’t understand us at all! We have had our 7^th power cut since we arrived in Vietnam and had to walked down to breakfast on the 2^nd floor in the dark on some floors, we are on the 7^th!  We intended to stay in after breakfast to book a flight to Ho Chi Minh City ready for the Tet New Year but as we have no internet I thought I would write our blog until it comes back on. We are off to Hoi An for about a week tomorrow (only 30km away) but we wanted to book the flight today as travelling is busy this time of year so I hope it comes back on soon, we have been running on generators all morning.

Power is back on now so we are going to book our flights online before we go out around town...