Halong Bay!

We just got back from a 3-day tour of Halong Bay, one of Vietnam's world heritage sites. Halong Bay is a few hours away from the capitol of Hanoi and something like 95% of tourists in Vietnam include it in their itineraries. We had a great time, beautiful weather, and a very nice group of people on our boat.

Our first night we slept on the boat and this is near where we parked. All those other boats are doing the same thing, and this is supposed to be low tourist season!

See the rest...

Many of the karsts (limestone formations that stick right out of the water) have caves in them. This one was HUGE... I think you can see some people in the photo for scale.

We also took a hike through the national park on CatBa Island, and this photo is taken from the top of a very tall metal tower.

Josh on said tower- notice how rusty the metal is...

Swimming and jumping from the boat was one of the best parts of the trip. The weather was perfect for a nice dip in the water. (yes, that's Josh)

We spent an afternoon kayaking around a pretty bay and some islands. Our guide spent about 10 minutes "hooting" next to one of the islands. Apparently he was calling monkeys, but none ever came. Overall, this pre-booked trip finally exceeded expectations (see post of a few days ago about expectations)! It was a wonderful and relaxing way to spend three days.

Hanoi

Its time for pictures! Forgive the lack of writing on this one, we've been writing alot and time for a break.

This is water pupetry. Apparently its an ancient art that is over 1,000 years old where the puppeters sit behind the screens and manipulate the puppets through a series of poles and cables.

See the rest...

Little did we know that Ho Chi Minh was being persevered (like Stalin!) in this place. I don't really like the idea of keeping someone's corpse looking alive as long as possible... interesting side note, for three months every year they take Uncle Ho to Russia for maintance.
A replica of a common house built in the Ethnology musesm. Very cool.
This is a bicycle loaded up with baskets, lots and lots of baskets.

The Opera House in Hanoi.

Note to self:

Don't come to Laos for the internet connection speed. The waterfalls are pretty though.

Normally there would be a picture of the pretty waterfall, but after all this is Laos...

This beer...

cost 12.5 cents. Just thought you should know.

Expectations

Why does Josh look so sad in this photo? Because our luck with the overnight "hard sleep" trains ran out on the way back from SaPa to HaNoi in Northern Vietnam. Take a look at that "bed"! It is a board with a mat on it. And that's it. Oh, and the air conditioning we paid for? That wasn't there either. (Suck it up, you might say. Well, it is 40C today! That's hot! And, for the first time this trip, I was feeling quite unwell. Nothing like feeling feverish while lieing on a mat in hot, humid air...)

I think I've learned something about being a "Westerner". I expect to get what I paid for. And if what I paid for and what I get are somehow not equivelant, I expect at least to get what I was told I was going to get when I paid. I am increasingly convinced that this is not the case around here.

Read the rest...
We've discovered this happens when we book things. Our trip to the Mekong Delta was very nice, and we're glad we went. However, the "contents" of the trip could have been squeezed into one day if it weren't for the early hour of the floating market and its distance from Saigon. We were also surprised to join up with a few other tour groups along the way- "why we wait? oh, we wait because we have 10 more people to fit on bus for ride back to Saigon." The day trip to the BacHa market near SaPa was also interesting and worthwhile, but we thought the market was not nearly as fascinating as the description. And that ticket heading back on the train was supposed to be the hard sleep air-conditioned type. We did not splurge on the first class "soft sleep" nor did we go so cheap as to agree to the non-AC type. We bought our first ticket at the train station ourselves, but the second one we bought through our hotel. We tried at the train station, but they wouldn't let us purchase tickets in advance. Instead, the hotels charge an extra dollar or two and then send someone an hour down the mountain to buy them for you.

We've heard this complaint from other backpackers and tourists in Vietnam. We think it might be this country in particular because short-term tours (day trips up to 5-day treks) are so common. In Vietnam, it is often easier and cheaper to book a tour somewhere than to actually do it yourself. We wouldn't have been able to get as far into the Mekong as quickly if we'd done it on our own. Along the same lines, we could have hired our own transportation to the BacHa market, but it would have cost a lot more than we paid for the tour.

The same is true of travel through the country itself. The hop-on hop-off buses are about half as much as a train ticket. But it's that "tour" thing we hate. The hop-on hop-off buses are almost completely backpackers and they make stops here and there at tourist sites or roadside cafes. You then end up traipsing through some villagers' house with another 22 people or spending an hour and a half waiting for everyone to both order food and use the toilet.

We've heard a number of complaints that the hotel room given was not quite like the hotel room shown in the brochure or the air-con promised didn't exist. One Australian/British couple we met had booked a speed-tour from Saigon to Cambodia. They drove to Pnom Penh, took a boat to Siem Reap and then flew back to Saigon from there. Among other things, they were promised a speed boat for the 6-hour trip from Pnom Penh up the Tonle Sap River to Siem Reap. Instead, they ended up with what they called "a canoe with an outboard motor." Perhaps it wasn't that bad, but it certainly wasn't what they had been promised. We've also heard that if you take the 24-hour bus from HaNoi, Vietnam to Vientaine, Laos, buy the cheapest ticket possible, no matter what they promise, because everyone ends up on the same crowded, non-AC bus no matter whether they paid $11 or $25!

This expectations thing is new for me. I like to think of myself as fairly laid back and easy to please. But I've learned that when I don't get what I expect and someone/thing is at "fault", I want someone to complain to! So its terribly frustrating to be in a country where the train conductors don't speak your language and most tour operators don't really care. When someone told me it was summer in Hoi An and that I shouldn't expect rain, I was terribly disapointed when it did rain our first morning. But who can I complain to then? (And, honestly, the rain did wonders for the heat.) However, with tours and the like, we've learned to set our expectations a bit lower because it doesn't seem to matter to the locals if things change mid-route. Who do we complain to anyway? Upon seeing the mats, the two Vietnamese girls in our train compartment wrinkled their noses, sighed a bit, complained to each other, but never said anything to the train staff. (But I claim that they paid for non-AC and were simply annoyed that the beds had no cushion like some hard sleep compartments.) Basically, falling short of expectations seems to happen when we don't do things ourselves, another reason we hope to avoid more "tours" if we can help it (unless they're more private like Minh's). I just don't think this would happen as often in the US. In America, clients who feel cheated complain and get their money back or at least get a coupon for 10% off at the gift shop.

The other thing I(we)'ve learned is that Josh does not have as large a sense of "no, this is how it SHOULD be" as I do. Apparently I haven't completely shed that child-like belief that life is or at least should be "fair". I figure it's fine to think the way I think; I just need to work on not voicing it everytime I feel I am on the short end!

We just ate what?!?

Drink up!

We made friends with the staff at our hotel in Sapa. Nga (sounds like nyuh), the only English speaking woman, was very friendly and at one point invited us to join them for some food and drink in the hotel lobby. Having come straight from dinner after that 25k hike, we weren't hungry at all, but that didn't seem to stop them. They poured first Josh and then me something yellowy from a bottle and made us drink up. Then we discovered that the bottle was half full of grub/worms. And then they poured us more (Josh in particular had 5-6 shots)- what could we do? We couldn't be impolite!

Check out those worms...

Nga also carefully fished out the best peices from the boiling pot of water sitting on a hotpad on the table. When I looked into my bowl I discovered some vegetables, some dark peices of liver and something decidely round and decidely white-clear and lumpy-looking. I decided it was pure fat very possibly from the spinal cord of some animal and with a bit of cartilege-type material attached, and I decided I would start with the better of the options- the veggies. Once those were gone, I nibbled at the liver. That's when we learned it was actually horse we were eating and that before we could go to bed I had to eat the jello-y peice because it was the very best part (she had very carefully found it in the pot for me). Mmmmmm.... I chewed on that thing for a long time and it never changed shape. But it slid right down the second time I swallowed (The first time I gagged. Politely, though. I don't think anyone noticed.)

Megan, Nga, and another hotel staff person (Nga somehow reminded me of you, Queenie, which made me miss you!!)

Sapa and comments on Tourism

The beautiful view down the valley from Sapa

Tourism does wonderful and horrible things to a place. Last weekend we visited a beautiful little mountain hill station called Sapa, in the northwestern corner of Vietnam, and while the scenery was absolutely breathtaking, both Meg and I had a difficult time with some of the people we met there.

Women selling items to tourists at the BacHa market

Read the rest with lots of Sapa photos...

Sapa is a French Colonial town in the midst of local indigenous people (minority people). These folks, like the other minority folks we've met, have lived almost exclusively in the isolated mountains between Vietnam and China and consequently have cultures that are unique to themselves. These regions were more or less closed off to the broader world until about 1993, when suddenly foreign tourists were allowed to come in. And how they came in. Sapa is now one of the hot spots of Tourism in Vietnam, with thousands of people visiting on the weekend (because there are several large markets in the area) and a decent number of people during the week as well. Sapa's fame really draws people in as they come to see the beautiful views and the local tribes in their traditional clothes, which are quite unique. We took the night train from Hanoi to Sapa last Friday, arriving in a fine drizzle and enjoying a day of relaxed coffee-drinking and journal-writing before venturing into local villages.

The traditional dress is one of the amazing things to see in the hill country. This photo shows clothes out to dry along a village fence.

Sapa itself is a simply beautiful place. It literally is this idyllic small town located at the top of a ridge looking down onto a valley of stepped rice paddies. It is often cloudy, rainy, and cold there (yes, I was actually cold for about 5 minutes!) because clouds roll into the valley and then slowly creep over the ridge. When the clouds break it is simply breathtaking, and even when it is overcast there are still these wispy clouds crawling through the mountain side. It is, as one guide book puts it, "A justifiable tourist trap."
Josh and some local women among the stepped rice paddies

A boy taking goats to the market

Now the problem of Sapa is this: there are a variety of local peoples who have lived in (relative) isolation for several hundred years but were suddenly introduced to Tourism when the floodgates opened and they, like all good entrepreneurs and people who find themselves on the other side of a tourist trap, find ways to make it work for them. This changes their traditional way of life in many ways as they slowly begin to work and function as part of this tourist trap. For example, most of the women no longer work in the fields but spend their time making hand(ey) crafts for tourists. Many children no longer go to school because they will make more money peddling to tourists than they will in other jobs. We even encountered a random ticket booth along the road- we had to pay just to walk through a village! Not that these changes are inherently bad (though I find them disheartening) because they bring some much-needed revenue to an otherwise poor region. But I think it changes the make up of a place. Whereas before tourists went to Sapa to see these (untouched)people and go to markets, etc... now it almost felt as if there was a performance set up everyday by the minority peoples. I know this isn't entirely true, but it certainly wasn't the visit to "traditional" villages of minority peoples I had expected.

A women sews traditional embroidered clothe into bags for tourists at the Sapa market

A number of women carried babies with them as they sold (see the items hanging from her neck?)

Another, more unfortunate, side effect is the kind of sellers these woman have become (more often than not). They walk around the streets pressing everyone they meet into a sale (which isn't an overly uncommon selling technique in Vietnam though they reached a new level of persistence). Unlike many of the other places and sellers in Vietnam, these women were not rebuffed by simply saying "no" several times but would walk with you and continue to try and convince you why you should by their bag, necklace, pillow cover, opium, etc... Sometimes after we had said no to a seller several times she simply would follow us around, not asking anymore but just to watch and see what we did... or perhaps to be there just in case we felt inspired to by 5 new embroidered pillow covers. The women in the "I'm huge!" post for example walked with us for over a mile. They met us en route to another village and they asked us to buy things. We politely declined and continued on our way, wherein they decided to follow us. Three kilometers later we reached our destination and then they began to try and sell us stuff again, now using the phrase, "Me walk with you long time, why you no buy from me?" They also had excellent English and would begin a conversation with kindly questions about country of origin, name, siblings, age. etc. This would seem so nice until they asked you to buy something, making the entire pleasant conversation seem suspiciously like a sell-tactic.

I guess more than this being an undisputed problem, I just find this progression rather sad. People left traditional ways of life to meet the desires of rich travelers and this move strikes me as a perversion of their previous lives and of what I want traveling to be. I don't know if I have the right to say such a thing but it just feels wrong to pimp your culture out for cash (I come from the richest country in the world and where we don't just pimp out our culture we export it by the truck loads). More than anything I was just sad that I found myself becoming aggravated by (otherwise sweet) 20 year old women who are just trying to get by.

A man preparing a field for planting. He is wearing Western clothes, but we DID see many women (far outside of Sapa) wearing traditional dress while working in the fields. It was somehow a relief knowing that they didn't just "dress up" to sell to us tourists.

I should quickly add that we did meet some very nice women. They asked the typical introduction questions (name, age, siblings, married, children) and then we asked them the same ones- without getting asked to buy something. They even remembered our names and when we saw them the next day they ran up to say hello and chat. We also encountered less selling out in the countryside. We walked 9km to a village, a bit disappointed by the final destination, and decided to walk back to Sapa through the stepped rice paddies along the river. Not only was it a beautiful walk, but the people were also exceedingly helpful- pointing us in the right direction and yelling something in their language to get our attention when they saw us heading the wrong way. The hike turned into a 25km one, but it was our favorite day. The next day (Sunday) we went on a day trip to the BacHa market, a supposedly huge market with a few different people-groups attending. However, we were frustrated when we encountered more of the aggressive selling there. (We did happen to see the friendly women from the day before in Sapa. Apparently they had never been to the BacHa market and were visiting also as "tourists". The local people, being from a different people group, stared at their costumes- funny how groups of people we associate with each other are still so distinct amongst themselves.)

Che and Lan, the nice women we met at the Sapa market and then saw again in BacHa.


Along the walk- far from any tourist spot the people were very friendly. These children helped us find our way on the confusing paths. You could tell their mom or someone had said, "don't go beyond this river," because they took us all the way across their property to the river and then pointed and waved goodbye. When we went the wrong way further up the hill, we heard them yelling and turned to see them watching out for us and pointing us in the right direction!

I don't know who is at fault in situations like these, or if any individual group is culpable. I am quick to point to ourselves as the incoming tourists, who have created this problem. It is because we will pay exuberant amounts of money for common items in these villagers lives, consequently changing the value of goods, that these minority people abandon their previous work. We are the ones who came into their villages to gawk, point, and take pictures. However, I don't think its fully genuine to place the blame solely on us. They are the ones who have chosen to do nothing but sell to tourists. They are the ones who choose to sell in such an abrasive manner, that I find myself defensive towards most women I met there. Ultimately I think that the present situation is what it is because... well... people want to make a buck and the method they've developed is the quickest way to do that. Why simply farm rice when you can sell a cheap pair of earrings for a dollar? It seems like an inherent aspect of tourism and while I'm sure someone somewhere has begun working on solutions for it... I'm not sure what they are.

Our muddy shoes after that long but beautiful hike- we were exhausted!

Everyone's got a Water Buffalo

Man, I'm huge!

By the way, you should know that all these women are in their mid-twenties. I stand head and shoulders above most people in Vietnam, especially minority people like these... its rather weird, I must say.

Pee on this!!!

Here is a post about toliets, nothing fancy just two pictures really.

See the rest...

Lets play a new game, its called find the toliet in this picture. Taken near the Cambodia/Vietnam border.

This sign is in case you aren't sure what to do with this thing in the middle of the stall, where there is normally just a hole. Taken at Angkor Wat.

"Today the road only for us!"

Or so said our guide, Mr. Minh, yesterday as we floated through the mountains along the Ho Chi Minh Trail on the back of two motorbikes. Vietnam is a long, lo-ong country, and mid-vietnam was supposed to be a stop-over for us- a few days in charming, historic Hoi An and a day in the ancient capitol of Hue, before catching the train up to Hanoi. Instead, we found ourselves completely blowing our Vietnam budget and getting off the beaten track... by quite a bit!

Read the rest...

We met Mr. Minh right after getting off the night train in Da Nang from Ho Chi Minh City/Saigon. We began by catching a ride with him to Hoi An, and ended by sitting over coffee to discuss the possibility of a two-day motorbike tour. We had three days in Hoi An and Hue, but rather than taking the 4-hour bus ride from one to the other, he suggested we ride with him into the mountains to see some local people, minority villages, and the Ho Chi Minh Trail (the trail used to bring supplies between the North and the South during the "American War" (yes, that's what we Americans call the Vietnam War)). Minh had this little book with hand-written recommendations from clients from all over the world, and this book alone convinced us to splurge.

Let's just say it was worth it. Josh and his backpack rode with Minh's colleague, Mee, while me and my backpack were with Minh. We started the day around Hoi An, a beautiful city on the water and a justifiable tourist trap, visiting the World Heritage Site My Son (Angkor-contemporary temples built of brick) and seeing how the locals made rice paper, pottery, cotton weavings,and silk weavings (from cacoon to loom). We would stop at these random houses where Minh was obviously a welcome site and get to see what the people were up to. I tried making a bowl on the potters wheel while an old woman kicked it around for me, and Josh made some rice paper (used in spring rolls, fried into a crisp for a snack...). As we left, Mee would stuff some money into their hands as a thanks. It was refreshing not to be asked to buy something after seeing it made, as is typical of places tourist buses stop.

Me and my "pot"

Josh and the rice paper

The rice is planted/harvested three times a year in this part of the country, and we happened upon the harvest. The farmers use the roads to dry things, so we kept having to dodge around swaths of rice, corn, cinnamon, rice paper (dried on large screens), peppercorns, you name it... The smells would change as we road through different villages with their different specialties. The pottery village would have huge piles of wood waiting to heat up the room-size kilns. The weaving villages would be quiet and then suddenly loud and then quiet again as we went past a home with a loom. I think the smell of cinnamon along the mountain roads was my favorite!

Harvesting rice ("Back to the sun, face the ground," as Minh said about farmers)

Here neighbor women work together "making" silk. As they boil silk worm cocoons, the single strands unravel and can be threaded unto a spool. The spools are dried and then sold to another group of neighboring women who dye and weave them into cloth. The pupa are cleaned, dried and sold to be eaten. They look like fat grub. Yum.

We then headed into the mountains, stopping for a nice swim in a waterfall. We were within a few kilometers of Laos and the views were spectacular. We'd lived in the mountains for a few months early this year, but these were different- instead of pine trees and snow there was lush, green tropical plants and rice planted in the valleys. This is the land of many minority people, as Minh called them. Nomadic until after the American war, the people are now the recipients of a compaign to bring them a bit more prosperity. The government propaganda'ed them (to use Minh's term) how to cultivate fruit, rice, and corn, how to build safe homes in one place, and, most recently, to sleep under mosquito nets to prevent the spread of malaria (we saw some old road signs to this order). We met so many children that Minh told us they were just beginning to propaganda them about family planning. Apparently in the rest of the country, you cannot get a government job if you have over two children.

This family lived 4km from the Laos border, but will probably soon have to move to a government sponsored village where they are closer to a school and hospital. This was stated quite matter-of-fact.

Each village had a large common house and, often, a suspension bridge over some body of water to get there. Some of the older women had on clothes that reminded me of the photos I'd seen of minority groups in the far north of Vietnam.

Children running to say goodbye as we leave their village. (I wish it weren't so blurry!!) Josh just turned around to yell at them and make them laugh. The common house is in the background and is used for everything- elections, weddings, festivals...

View of valley/rice paddies/village from the road. You can see the common house in the village.

We spent the night in Hien, a town with no phones for international calls or internet for "tourists" like us. We were a complete novelty, judging by reactions of the kids out on the streets during our evening walk- "hello!" "what you name!" "Way you from?" "I luv you!" "Muny?"

The next day was more of the same, with some nice stops for iced sugar cane drink and white coffee (dark, individually-brewed cups of coffee with sweetened condensed milk... fantastic!). We were indeed alone on the road, as Minh promised.

Minh, Mee, and Josh with sugar cane drink

Minh was informative, considerate, and certainly loved his country. He said most of his clients were European, very few American, and we enjoyed conversations about the war (young people today aren't interested), language, tourism here and elsewhere (Vietnamese don't travel outside the country a whole lot, according to Minh), food (how can you eat hamburgers? So fatty!) and other things. We eventually made it back to Hue for our evening train to Ha Noi, and here we are!

A quick note on trains in Vietnam

We like them!

Why? (and click here to read about the illegal stuff we saw)

We like them because they are a beautiful way to see the countryside without having to cram yourself into a bus seat for 10-hours. Plus most buses here are for tourists, while the train definately is not, especially when you take the "hard sleep" (2nd class with 6 hard beds per compartment) as opposed to the "soft sleep" (first class and 4 squishy beds). We had a nice silent conversation with a woman heading to HoNoi who showed us photos of her husband and grandchild and shared peices of sugarcane with us. And we ended up in the middle of a family of a few grown children (the two men were in military uniforms) and grandparents. Change the grandpa's eyes just a bit and we decided he'd look decidely like an old dutch grandpa! The grandma was tiny and cute with smiling eyes. They fed us hard boiled eggs and bright maroon pumpkin seeds (??). They were on the full 40h+ trip from Saigon to HaNoi.

Now the reasons we don't like the trains (not counting the kid who screamed (not cried) himself to sleep the first night and the soldiers' 5:30 alarm clock and booming voice) can be summed up by stating the rules on our ticket (typos are the real thing):

"Passengers are prohibited to carry on board dangerous items such as explosive inflammable radio - active or dead body, nauseatingitems, live stock or other commodities not allowed to be transported by government regulations."

and what we saw:

• live stock- there was a squawking chicken in the compartment next door to us



• nauseatingitems- Josh had the bottom bunk above a luggage compartment. All night it STUNK. In the morning we realized why when Grandma pulled out a whole durian fruit. On Wikipedia, durian is discribed as smelling like urine, vomit, and sweaty socks. Take your pick.



• explosive- when we got off the train in HaNoi, we discovered that the man in the other bottom bunk had a firearm under his bed. Not a hand gun, mind you, but an all-out assault rifle. Yikes!



• as for the radio, this doesn't really count, but playing the same five piano instrumentals (including Whitney Houston's "I Will Always Love You", a song from The Lion King, and, my personal favorite, Frank Sinatra's "My Way") for 5 hours straight is definately nauseating...

This is photo of a jack fruit. I know, random, but it looks a whole lot like Durian. It's big and spiky and also smells. Now you can picture it under a bed.

So what have you been up to?

It seems necessary to throw in a few travelogue-type posts every now and then. As we walk/ride around and see/experience all these new things, we make comments to each other like, "that man alone could be a post on our blog" or "did he really just say that? I could write for pages on that opinion of the USA. I wonder what other people think about that." But it seems as if those posts need some context. So this is a context-driven update, I suppose! [Also, now you can check the weather of our current location and see that it is 28C and scattered thunderstorms (as opposed to the 30C and scattered thunderstorms of last week...). In fact, if you look it up on weather.com, you will notice the perfect monsoon symbol for tomorrow- half a sun showing behind a dark grey cloud with rain pouring from it and perhaps even a lightning bolt.]

So where exactly are we? Well, what time are you reading this? We are right now in the middle of Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), awaiting an overnight train to DaNang. Vietnam is a very, very long and narrow country and DaNang is near the middle (and near the lovely town of Hoi An), so we decided to splurge on a sleeper train rather than try to sleep on a bus.

(briefly?) where we've been and some comments on Cambodia...

As you may have noticed, we made a fairly speedy trip through Cambodia. We made that crazy border crossing and then spent a few days in Siem Reap, the city close to Ankor Wat. Ankor was, of course, amazing. The ruins are impressive, even and especially after 900 years. Some are covered with moss and trees, while others have been carefully cleared. We wandered our way through them... it feels strange to be allowed to climb up and around and over without fences or signs. We also enjoyed a nice hike up through the jungle to a beautifully carved river bed- the Kmers created beautiful patterns right in the rock under the water! One thing we learned in particular that day was to always check a tuk-tuk for rain screens. We knew the journey out to that particular site was a bit further away, so we were too busy checking the bike out to notice the missing rain screens and impending clouds. The road there was extremely bumpy. The road back was extremely muddy... and wet! We were soaked... but it was kinda fun in a way (or so we told ourselves). The rain is welcome when it's so warm.

We then took a bus from Siem Reap to Pnom Penh, the capitol of Cambodia. We spent a lovely day walking around, strolling along the river, visiting the national palace and national museum and the disturbing Tuol Sleng (S-21) prison museum. It was a bit sad to see these two extremely important museums in a bit of disrepair because the country offers little if no public funding, compounded by a lack of qualified historians/restorers/administrators. I don't know about Cambodia, but in Vietnam some moto drivers make a higher salary than teachers. Tuol Sleng is an old high school the oppressive Kmer Rouge regime turned into a detention and torture center in the 60s and 70s. It was a horrible place- amazing to us that such atrocities occurred so recently. It means the people we saw on the street, met and talked to, bought fruit from, had been forced to evacuate the city and move to rural work camps, had lost many relatives, had practically starved, had perhaps been tortured themselves... We found a childrens book in Kmer about a little boy running into a field after a stray soccer ball. A land mine went off, and he lost his leg. It told how he recovered and still plays soccer with his crutches. Moral of the story: obey the signs and stay where it's safe. Can you believe that? A regular children's picture book...

We had a few conversations with Cambodians about being american and how lucky we are. I cannot begin to get into it now, but lets just say they are right- we are so fortunate!

That brings me to today, actually, as we visited the CuChi tunnels and the War Remnants museum in Saigon. Full of horrible pictures and US military equipment, the museum made us a bit hesitant to admit that we were americans. The text was noticeably biased, of course... again, another conversation. The CuChi tunnels were amazing- the VietCong spent weeks in these tiny, hot, humid underground networks. I cannot imagine being a foreign soldier fighting in this climate/landscape.

The last few days, we've been in the Mekong Delta, visiting floating markets, rice, rice paper, and coconut candy factories, and enjoying being on a breezy boat. It's been fun here in the south, but we've heard such great things about the North that we are looking forward to moving on!

Quick thoughts on Saigon

This is quite brief, more to come later.

We arrived in Saigon on Wednesday and I was offered weed six times... in about as many hours. So far Vietnam is an interesting place.

In case you're looking for the AAA Cambodia

A relatively uncrowded van on the road between Pnom Penh and the Vietnam border. There were twice as many people inside the van, as well.

It appears the Cambodian traffic laws are as follows:

1. If possible, try to stay more to the right side of the road.
2. Whoever/whatever vehicle is going faster has the right of way.
3. Don't worry about getting gas in advance- every third home will have petrol for sale on the side of the road, quite handily measured out into 1L Coca-cola bottles. Funnel and umbrella provided.
4. A horn is useful for many things, but should especially be used to warn every single moto, van, petrol truck, tuk-tuk, naked child, pick-up, toyota camry (i.e. taxi), dog, chicken, pedestrian, plow motor+handle on wheels, bus, etc. you encounter that you are coming up behind it and may be passing (keep rule #2 in mind). A turn signal is polite but unnecessary since a loud horn is so much more effective.

These rules manifest themselves in the following ways:

Read the rest...

• Notice there are no capacity rules. If you can fit 2 tourists with one full-size backpack and one daypack a piece plus a driver on a single moto, 14 people on top of your van, 17 on a flatbed behind a moto, or 2 dozen in the cab, on the cab, and in the bed of a pick-up truck, that's fine. In fact, those on the cab are especially useful if your windshield wipers fail to function in an afternoon monsoon downpour, providing you can detach one blade for manual use.
• Per rule #2, the vehicle hierarchy is directly related to speed with slight adjustments for size. Speed is more important in passing and size in turning. It seems to go as follows:
  • bicycle
  • cyclo
  • tuk-tuk
  • petrol truck
  • moto
  • pickup truck
  • car
  • coach/big bus
  There is no need to remain behind a vehicle lower on the list than your own. Rules #2 and 4 dictate that you simply tap lightly on the horn for a few seconds (or, alternatively, hold the thing down for the entire episode). The vehicle in front of you will hear the horn and be aware that you are aware that if they swerve left or fall over they will get run over. Said vehicle should move further to the right (or not) to provide more space for passing. It does not matter if there is no more room on the swath of dirt or concrete for oncoming traffic; you probably sped up to pass, so that vehicle coming straight at you at a shockingly fast speed should slow down and wait for you (see rule #2).
• As there are few, if any, traffic lights (and who needs stop signs anyway), cross an intersection or turn left by slowly budging your way into oncoming traffic. No need to wait for a break because there won't be one. Just weave your way across, Frogger-style, making eye contact with oncoming drivers if necessary so they can see your humanity and take pity on your plight. Alternatively, if in a smaller vehicle such as a moto and turning left, feel free to turn immediately, keeping to the left side and heading straight into oncoming traffic. Continue on the left side of the street, avoiding those heading your way, until a more appealing break makes it possible to scoot over to the right side (see rule #1).

Side note: When it rains, you get wet and muddy, so no need to slow down through those attractive red-orange mud puddles, even if you are in an open vehicle and passing an open vehicle or pedestrian. If in a car and a puddle is so big that the spray entirely covers every transparent surface and you feel as though you were suddenly plunged into a vat of warm caramel, no need to stop. Simply turn on the windshield wipers (or use the person on the roof); you don't need anything but the front windshield to drive anyway.

(Oh, and if your taxi's engine begins to make strange noises and then fails to turn over at all on a dirt road in the middle of central Cambodia, simply borrow a bucket from the closest house, fill it with water from the closest puddle/ditch (you shouldn't have to go far), and dump the entire thing on the engine. Also be sure to flip that mysterious switch under the dash a few times. Works like a charm every time.)

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A few photos to bring home the point...

Motos, motos, and more motos. (OK, this is actually Ho Chi Minh City/Saigon, Vietnam, but you get the idea.)
What was that about mud on the windshield? Our taxi from Poipet (Thai border) to Siem Reap (Angkor Wat).
Our taxi again- this is the mechanic we stopped at in some random Cambodian city. We were just so greatful we made it to said city, what with the land mines off the side of the road and all... We think they did nothing but pour some clean water in the radiator, but whatever it was, it worked!
Here is one of those "gas stations" we were talking about.

(Regretfully, we do not have a photo of the man on the cab of a truck hand-wiping the windshield during a downpour, but it did happen. Really.)

A Potpourri of Pictures

posted/titled by josh but written by megan
Before we move into thoughts, experiences, and photos from a new country (Cambodia), we want to make a few comments on Hong Kong. First of all, we had a great time, partly thanks to our hosts (a friend of mine from Columbia and her husband).

I think one thing that surprised us about HongKong was that it was just another city. Unique, fun, beautiful and dirty, most recommendable... but another city none-the-less. I would not be writing that if I hadn't lived in New York for a while. Coming from small towns, cities were enigmas to Josh and I, but now we know what to do and how to handle them, more or less. Compared to New York, Hong Kong certainly felt as though it were squished into the size of Manhattan and then pulled up a dozen or so stories. And most of the side streets felt like Chinatown (go figure), full of people, bright signs in Cantonese, lots of vendors. The most common activities were eating and shopping. Markets are all over the place. This photo is from a night market on Temple Street on the Kowloon side of Hong Kong (the "city" straddles a few islands):What also struck us was that each market, or street, more specifically, sold its own thing. We saw the flower market, bird market (with toucans, parakeets, bird cages and everything), goldfish street, women's market, dried food street (giving us many of the photos from the "name that food" contest), shoe street, bird's nest and ginger street... Below is a photo from the goldfish street.
Read the rest...
Certainly one of the best and most beautiful features of HongKong is that it is made up of a number of green, hilly islands, and water is everywhere. Because the central part of the city is also on its own hilly island, living a bit outside of city center means you have a decent vertical drop to cover... so the city built the longest outside escalator in the world! We thought this was pretty funny. Convenient, but funny.We had a full week to explore the city, so we went to Stanley (on the other side of Hong Kong island), Lamma Island and Lantau Island. Lantau has a great gondola ride up to a big sitting buddha. The photos below are from Lamma Island, a nice place for beaches, fishing villages, and walks along the ridge. It was also our first really hot day, and we were greatly impressed and amazed by the Chinese wearing jeans and even sweaters!
View of the city where we caught a return ferry:

a woman collecting clams (there was an interesting mix of old and new here, much like hong kong itself):
Me and the view back towards where we came from (our hike was called a "family walk" and since it was sunday, it was full of families!):

Night view of hong kong (every night at 8pm the city has a laser light show using all the buildings, which works well since the city is on an island and you can view it from the Kowloon side. It's a little long and cheesy, but we decided that Times Square should definitely try its own version. I can only imagine all those lights turned off and then blindingly coming back on to a nice techno beat...):

That's all we had time to upload/write. We are now in Siem Reap, Cambodia, near Ankor Wat, heading to Pnom Penh tomorrow morning. It was quite the adventure getting here, but we will save that story for another day...