Mekong Delta Tour

April 10

We get up super early to get on the bus that is taking us to the Mekong Delta.  We get to the agency and then onto a big bus that bumps along for nearly 3 hours before arriving at a dock where we board a smaller boat that takes us to a nearby island called Dragon Island.  We disembark and walk through the jungle to a hut where we are having some honey tea and enjoying the local items for sale by the people living here.  The tea is amazing and the honey is made at this location.  We buy some honey brittle and then we get to pose with a python that was caught nearby.  Sam is the only guy among us that is brave enough to actually pose with the snake.….the more cowardly of us simply lean in to have our picture made with him and his serpent.  Afterward, we follow along a small path deep into the jungle interior and make our way along the water canals and see the boats flying past one another back and forth along the river.  We soon come upon a small “dock” (area made from a couple of wooden planks) and  we are told to go into the boats in groups of four.  Soon enough, we are off and in a race to get to wherever it is that we are going.  On the front of the boat is a woman squatting onto the very bow of the boat and another woman in the back.  They are paddling furiously and we are zooming along the canals at this point.  You wonder how people really live here and now we know.  The river provides a source of commerce and travel and an entire way of life.  It is really cool.  We arrive at our original boat and get back on board for a short ride to Turtle Island where we will have lunch and visit a coconut candy factory.  We arrive at our lunch destination and are given the choice of having a “river” fish that is deep fried.  I have heard about this very fish from Grandy and Bonne with rave review, so we go for the extra expense to have it for lunch.  It arrives at our table standing up between some small wooden supports and the server picks the meat off the skeleton and places it into some rice paper wrappers with herbs and glass noodles.  She then wraps it up like a spring roll and gives one to each of us to try.  It is absolutely delicious.  Then we are served a meal of rice and chicken with veggies.  Soon we are off to the candy factory.  We get on a motor boat and are off through the winding canals back into the middle of nowhere.  We keep going until we must be at the complete interior of the island and soon find a small dock where there is a path leading back into the jungle.  We come upon a large hut where there is equipment for pressing coconut and heating it to candy stage and then where they cut and wrap it up for sale in stores.  We are able to sample the candy and, of course, purchase some if we like it.  We get a little of it for later and then we are back on a boat to go to hear some traditional music before returning to Saigon by boat.  We are getting pretty tired at this point and are a bit ready for the day to begin winding down.  The music is interesting, but I believe we are all weary at this point.  Once the music is done, we get onto a speedy boat that will take us back to Saigon in about 2 hours (we are told).  We leave around 3:30 and are ready for our return trip home.  Four hours later we are still not there and are really exhausted at this point.  Finally, we arrive and are picked up by a minibus to be driven to our hotels.  We get back to the guest house and climb up the stairs to shower and hopefully get some dinner before calling it a day.  We have a dinner of Indian food and return home to an early night.  

War Remnants in Vietnam

April 9

We get up not too early and make our way down to the lobby for breakfast.  The lovely couple running the guest house has a nice little menu for our breakfast that includes a baguette, egg prepared as you wish, fresh fruit and coffee (and for some reason tea as well with our coffee).  We enjoy our breakfast and then decide to walk to a nearby museum.  It is the War Remnants museum and we are interested to show the kids some of the history and photos from the Viet Nam war.  There has been some apprehension on the part of the kids since all they know of the war they have seen in movies and even asked us if people would want to shoot us when we go there.  We assure them that is not the case.  It is a much farther walk than anticipated and we are drenched in sweat upon our arrival.  The museum has an outside “garden” where they have on display the tanks, flame throwers and heavy artillery that was left by the Americans when we departed in 1975.  The boys find these very interesting and the statistics are mind-boggling when you read that one flame thrower could ignite and area the size of Five Points.  We soon make our way to the inside and read with interest the notations under the images of the many countries that made entreaties to the US to leave Vietnam.  We meet a family from southern India that are living in Hong Kong and have a very interesting conversation with them about war and the Americans penchant for it. Their comments strike a chord, despite the fact that they are not bashing the US, but making the point that no one can ever really win a war.  They are make a curious comment that this exhibit serves no purpose but to incite hatred.  We enjoy looking at a map of the world and quizzing the kids on where we are and the names of countries we have visited and some we have not.  They are becoming really good at geography….YEA!  We make our way up the stairs to the exhibition area and when we are confronted with the photography and commentary, it becomes clear that this is a pretty big propaganda machine.  The whole message here is “look what the Americans did to our country and how they maimed and mutilated our people”.  There are lots of statistics on how many innocent people we killed and how we did it in great detail.  We continue through the exhibit to the area that deals with agent orange and the horror it inflicted on the people of that era and much later effects the chemicals caused on future generations.  I believe it is good to hear opposing views, but this is not a well rounded argument.  Plenty of statistics are given about how many people we killed, but nowhere is any indication of the atrocities that the Vietnamese people inflicted on their own people.   We finish up the museum as they are closing for lunch and I must admit I have a big pit in my stomach.  This is very good food for thought, but regrettably I have now lost my appetite.

We walk back in the direction of our hotel and stop once again at the Ben Thanh market to have a bite to eat and pick up any last minute items that we want to have as souvenirs…..spices, tshirts, Calvin Klein underwear…you get the picture.  Once we are back at our hotel, we decide to take a tour along the Mekong Delta the following day.  Our hotel can arrange our trip for us and we are happy to have them do it.  We rest for a while and then go back to our new favorite restaurant for dinner.  After dinner, we re-climb our stairs (aka Mt. Everest) and watch some TV before bed.

Hoppy Easter

April 8

We woke up very early again today in order to get to our bus to depart Phnom Penh for Saigon.  It is Easter and the Easter Bunny has found us in Phnom Penh….amazing.  This is just another Sunday in a Buddhist country so not too much celebrating is done on the Easter front. The pickup was right in front of our hotel and we were then taken a short distance to another bus stop.  We are riding on a Vietnamese government bus, which we are told is supposed to be nice, but in fact is nothing special.  As we approach the station, once again we are greeted by desperate vendors hawking snacks, sunglasses, fruit and they come right up to the window waiting anxiously for you to depart the bus.  They lay claim to you and will often begin fighting among themselves as to who identified the client first.  We are in for a ride of about 3 hours to the border with Vietnam and then another three hours to Saigon/HCMC.  There is a bit of confusion about where our seats are in fact located and we end up having to move several times, each time a Vietnamese couple opens up the sealed water that comes with the seat and then leaving it behind for us to have their opened containers.  I kindly return their opened bottles to them and retrieve the unopened ones with my most sincere smile. At one point, we stop by the side of the road for what I assume is a toilet break and so me and the boys depart the bus to purchase snacks.  Much to our surprise, when we look up the bus is leaving very quickly and going onto a ferry.  It will not stop for us and we are running behind the bus and trying to get onto the stairs through the open door.  Finally, the bus comes to stop on the ferry and we are able to get back on board....whew!!  After this excitement, the trip is very uneventful and when we stop somewhere in the middle of nowhere for lunch, we all pile out to a small restaurant by the roadside.  They offer pre-made food that is not very good, but since we have had no breakfast today, we get some noodle soup and rice.  With the small amounts of food we are consuming,  daily exercise and the constant sweating, you might think we had shrunk up like raisins…..not so!  Can’t explain it, but the anticipated weight loss has yet to materialize.  Once we reach the border, we all pile off of the bus again to depart Cambodia and enter into Vietnam.  The transition through Cambodia is quite easy and we make our way to the Vietnamese side, there does not seem to be as much organization to how things are done.  Paulie notices that when the border guard examines our US passports, he nearly throws them at the bus driver to give back to us.  I missed this nuance and am only told about it later by Paulie.  We get back on the bus for the remaining 3 hours and arrive in Saigon around 2:30.  We are told that our hotel is very close by, within walking distance, so we trek around the corner and quickly locate our guest house called Ngoc Phan Guest House.  The owner speaks good English and is quite welcoming.  We are on the third and top floor, which means a total of 8 flights of stairs.   We struggle with our bags up the narrow stairwells and arrive to a bright and airy level consisting of two rooms, both for us.  We get unpacked, discover the Wifi and before long are ready to begin our exploration of our neighborhood.  We are told that there is a thriving market nearby (Ben Thanh) and we are within walking distance, so we set out.  We get some money at the ATM and decide to have a cool, refreshing drink to invigorate us.  When we get the bill, we are quite surprised by how much it costs.  Everyone has said that Vietnam is very inexpensive….so we can only assume that we have found the one very expensive place to have drinks….won’t make that mistake again.  We arrive at the market and are quite overwhelmed with all of the selections.  Each member of our party is trying/vying to go in a different direction and the maze like passageways through the vendors shops is quite claustrophobic.  We therefore assign each person a chance to direct us how they want to go and to see what they want to see.  First up is Paulie, who is determined to locate the spice vendors…..easily done….follow your nose.  We arrive to some not too wonderful smells (rotten fish?) and he quickly spends some of our “Dong” on cinnamon bark and black cardamom pods- not the kind of things you can get back home.  We also select some ground spices and then we are off in the direction that Sam chooses…..shoes.  We find a vendor that sells Toms and he and I both pick up a pair for $10 each.  Great buy!  Next is Annie who must preview every wallet and purse in the place before making a selection…..not what the guys had in mind, so they bid us adieu and we are free to spend as long as we like browsing while they return to the hotel.  We find a shop that has what she is looking for if we can only agree on the price.  She starts at 1,100,000VND ($55) and we end up at 500,000VND ($25).  Not a bad negotiation.  In the end, the lady gets a little ugly and says if we do not buy today we cannot return tomorrow and get the same price.  Oh well, c’est la vie.  We buy it and Annie is really thrilled.  We decide to return to the hotel and rest up for dinner time.  We get back and climb all those steps, shower and nap before returning to the bustling street for dinner.  As you make your way along the street, each restaurant has an “agent” on the street trying to lure you into their restaurant and they can sometimes exert quite a bit of pressure on you, while you are also being assaulted with street hawkers trying to sell you tourist books, bracelets, sunglasses, etc or passing you flyers to entice you to have a massage…..information overload!!!  Usually it has the effect of making you want to duck for cover into the first available seat at any given restaurant.  We manage to pass by a few on the lookout for a place that was recommended by the hotel but we opt to return to one that we were being sold on  by the agent out front.  When she sees us returning she starts jumping up and down in excitement….now that’s a warm welcome!  We settle in and try to get through the novelal of a menu ( I mean seriously there are 25 pages to this thing).  The kids are happy to have some pasta options and I go for Mexican food.  We all are pretty starved at this point, so we eat greedily and  return to our hotel completely satisfied and sleepy.  Good Night Vietnam.

The Killing Fields

April 7

Today we wake up far too early due to the unexpected arrival at 5:30am of a cement truck next door that is pounding and heaving right outside our window.  I am able to lie awake in bed for all of one hour before getting up and searching out a cup of coffee.  I find the most amazing place just down the street…Phnom Penh’s vesion of Starbucks called Café Fresco.  They even have Wifi.  Enjoy my latte for a while before returning to the now quiet hotel and wake up the crew.  We are going to Tuol Sleng Museum of Genocide (or S-21) and the Killing Fields today.  First, we decide to go ahead and get our bus tickets for an early morning departure tomorrow for Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) or Saigon.  We get a rude awakening when we learn that visas cannot be obtained at the border as we had assumed.  This is a total amateur mistake and we know it.  It is now 10:30 on a Saturday morning and they are telling us that the Embassy will not reopen until Monday.  Great!  We have flights out of HCMC on the early morning of the 11^th and this is totaling going to screw us up if we cannot get there in time.  We speak with the hotel staff, who have been quite helpful, and they tell us they can obtain them for us for an expedited fee.  We don’t have an option except to pay, so we pay.  They also help us with a cab driver/guide to take us to our destinations.  We tidy up the last details and are off to the Genocide Museum.  We start up a conversation with our driver and much to our dismay, we learn that his father was in the Khmer Rouge and he has lovely things to say about Pol Pot…..wow, didn’t realize anyone existed that could defend such a monster who slaughtered nearly 25% of his own population, but looks like we found one and are captives in his car for the remainder of the day.  The Museum houses the former school that was taken over in 1975 and turned into a torture chamber and prison where as many as 12, 000 plus people were brutalized, tortured and killed or were then taken to Choeng Ek to be killed on the spot.  They do not seem to have invested the resources that one might expect to present this place in a comprehensive way, but the photos of each of the prisoners speak for themselves.  The Khmer Rouge were apparently very methodical about documenting each of their victims by photographing them and keeping records of their “confessions” of being spies or agents of the CIA or KGB.  The photos of the actual tortured bodies that were found here upon the liberation of Cambodia in 1979 are the most shocking of all and I cannot help but to start crying.  This is quite disturbing.  After we complete our tour, we return to our driver, however, this time we are completely  quiet and I think the driver may have gotten a clue as to the fact that we were not fond of the Khmer rhetoric.  We then continue on to the orchard outside of town that was turned into one of approx. 300 killing fields throughout the country.  We receive a head set that offers very moving and complete details of what took place here with the most horrible detail being the tree against which the bodies of woman and children were thrown to kill them.  The mothers were forced to watch as their children were brutalized and their skulls crushed as they were torn apart by the tree bark and then shoved into a deep mass grave.  If they were not dead from the beating, they were then covered with DDT to chemically finish them off and to cover the stench of the rotting bodies.  We spend quite a while here and in the museum before returning to our hotel to get showered and rest up for a while.  We then go off to a night market and shop around for a while before returning home and calling it a very emotional day.

From Siem Riep to Phnom Penh

April 6

Another early morning rolls around and we are up at dawn to prepare for our departure from Siem Riep.  Today we are heading to Phnom Penh and will look forward to spending the better part of the day in a bus.  We looked into a boat trip, which we would have preferred, but the Mekong River is so low as this is the very end of the dry season that larger boats cannot navigate the river very well….so we will travel by bus.  We get down to the breakfast table and have a friendly visitor from the previous evening.  The waiter that has taken a great interest in our family has made a folded origami picture frame for Annie.  It is amazingly intricate and made out of Cambodian money.  We are quite surprised and it seems that he has shown up just to give this to us before we leave.  We are so humbled that he would do this for her and are very appreciative. Shortly after breakfast, we wait for our minibus to take us to the larger bus on which we will ride for the next 6+ hours.  There are no glitches and we are soon settled into our seats and on the open road.  The view from the bus is amazing.  The country is totally flat and vast.  We pass mostly very dry fields or we will go by small villages where the families are drying chilis or fish in the front yard.  We stop for lunch in a small town called Khampong Thom and have a really nice lunch before returning to the bus for another long haul.  Once we arrive in Phnom Penh, we are immediately assaulted by the usual suspects….tuk tuk drivers!  We settle on two drivers that will caravan us to our hotel for a whole $5 between the two of them.  Our hotel is more of a guesthouse and it comprised of three stories.  The room we reserved is not in good order, so we are moved to two balcony rooms that are quite adequate for our short stay.  Annie, Sam, Paulie and I walk around the neighborhood for a little while before returning to the hotel to have dinner.  We find a shop selling DVD’s and we cannot stand not to pick up a couple.  Seems like it has been forever since we just had a movie night.  We eat pizza for a change and then all pile into bed for a showing of “The Killing Fields” as research for our next adventure.

Angkor Wat

April 5

 

We enjoy a pretty good night, but have to get up very early in order to beat the heat.  We have a great breakfast compliments of our hotel and hire a taxi driver to take up to Angkor Wat.  His name is Wendy and he is just fabulous….the nicest guy who happens to speak very good English.  He takes us to the entrance where we purchase our tickets and out the other side.  Since Angkor Wat is the largest religious site in the world (yes, that means larger than Vatican City!), we will rely on Wendy and his AC car to help us along on our journey today.  We have reserved only a single day to tour the site, so we will want to make sure to hit the highlights which are a bit spreadout.  First up is Angkor Thom and it is quite impressive.  These temples were begun in the mid-12^th century.  Many people might recall them from the background scenes in the Laura Croft movies.  Yes….walking in the footsteps of history, err….Angelina Jolie!

We pass through the entrance gate that goes over the central moat to the site.  The gate is pretty awesome and is flanked on one side by 54 carved gods and on the other by 54 carved demons.  Once inside we make our way to the actual Wat and it is amazing.  The carving appears to be ancient and many of the columns/structures have simply fallen into huge heaps of carved stone.  This is also considered to be the 8^th wonder of the world.  We wander through the many chambers and rooms, leaving offerings of incense along the way.  Once back outside, we meet up with Wendy and head over to the Elephant Terrace, where they used to have the elephant fights for entertainment.  We are beginning to wilt and so kind of breeze through this site.  As we wait for Wendy to bring the car around, we purchase some cold water and Wham…..we have now become fair game for everyone selling anything and all of the children that have sweet faces that are really good at getting unsuspecting tourists to buy their stuff.  They are fairly relentless.  We make a quick getaway in the Wendy-mobile and are off to our next site, the Temple of the Perfection of Wisdom,  also known as the Temple of the mother….I’m liking this notion!  This is the temple that has the huge tree roots climbing through the ruins and holding them in place like glue.  Afterward, we have a break for lunch and invite Wendy to join us.  We have a great meal and then we are back at it.  We have saved Angkor Wat for last.  This is a source of great national pride for the people of Cambodia and it is featured on their national flag.  It has been in continuous use for nearly 900 years.  The city of Angkor Wat was the home to nearly one million people when London only had a population of around 50,000.  It was also begun about the same time as Notre Dame in Paris. 

We are in awe of the sheer size of this massive temple and are trying out best to fight the exhaustion  we are all feeling after spending the day in the blazing heat.  One thing I don’t get is how we are simply puddling our sweat off our entire body and the people working here are in full long sleeves, hats, long pants and one girl even has on gloves!  Amazing.  We spend about two hours roving around and then limp along the exit path back to Wendy who must see our ragged figures from afar as he speeds up to pick us up and return us to the hotel.  We enjoy a great swim in the pool to cool off and rest for a while before heading out to the night market.  We get a tuk-tuk driver to take us into town and we stop around what appears to be a pretty happening shopping scene.  We can’t even begin to take in the range of wares that are being offered here.  The prices are even less than in Thailand, if that is even possible.  We make a few purchases and then seek out an ATM and some refreshments.  We soon tire of the market and decide to go back to the hotel for another great dinner.  We hire a tuk-tuk and are on our way home when I notice a woman on the outskirts of town, sitting on the side of a darkened road with two children about 3 and 4 years old sleeping on bags of sand.  I cannot shake this image as we head toward our cozy hotel and upon arrival I ask the driver to take me back to the corner where she is hunched over.  He obliges me and we go the short way back.  When we arrive, the driver pulls over and I get out while Sam and Annie sit and watch.  I go over and kneel  down to where she is sitting and place a $20 bill in her hands.  I pat her on the back to show her some kindness that it seems has been completely absent from her life.  She looks up at me with tears in her eyes and bows her bony body in disbelief.  I stay there a minute and then return to the tuk tuk and back to the hotel.  I must admit that this is a very powerful moment and one I will never forget.  We need to remind ourselves everyday how very lucky we are and I wanted to make sure the kids knew this and could have empathy for those who are less fortunate.  We are all very tired and make it an early night as we turn out the lights on Siem Reap.