(I will not ) Miss Saigon!

Hello All from Vietnam!!!

First of all, I must apologize to the country of Cambodia - they are NOT the only nation of nosepickers.

I have the benefit of writing this after two weeks here -and can contrast and see the different parts and dynamics of Vietnam with hindsight. Its a very interesting country - not the least of which is how it combines a legacy of communism with an economy now that is staggering in its capitalistic bent. Here is a little cutie decked out for New Years right across the alley from our hotel entrance.

We've been in Vietnam about 2.5 weeks - its a huge country, stretching over a 1,000 miles from Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon) in the south to Hanoi in the north. The train linking the two cities, the Reunification Express, takes over 40 hours on a normal train to connect the two cities, and 30 hours for a speed train direct.

We arrived in HCMC's backpacker area the day after Tet (Lunar New Years) - but , of course, didn't avoid the ongoing increased cost and service charges for "New Years". The skank element in HCMC was much lower in the backpacker area than Bangkok, we were happy to discover. We walked around a bit looking for a hotel recommended by a couple we met in Siem Reap - and a little lady in green ran over , took us by the arm and helped us find our hotel, and another one with available rooms when our first choice was booked. She hung around a bit - don't know if she expected a tip or not. Here is a shot of a typical street near our hotel in HCMC. Lots of motorbikes - HCMC has 5.5 million people and 3 million motorbikes.

One thing that consistently delighted me was how many of the restaurants are organized. We stayed at a hotel on an alley with many restaurants nearby. The restaurant's seating area would be on one side of the alley and their kitchen would be across the alley - and the extensive menus (usually Vietnamese selections along with Italian, American and other choices for travellers) would be prepared in a room like the one below - not alot bigger than my kitchen, which is teeny, and with a gazillion options covered in the way of supplies. The next pic is from our balcony. We had a 5th floor room so 6 stories up. Vietnamese buildings tend to be very tall and skinny- there are 85 million people and limited land near the coast and cities to build on (the rest is water ,rivers or mountains). These red flags are everywhere.

We probably didn't do HCMC justice and only got out of our hotel area to head out to the Cu Chi tunnels 50 KM northwest of town. This complex have over 200 km of tunnels linked together, along with connected meeting rooms, hospitals, cooking areas and manufacturing areas for weapons and clothing. Though so close to the American occupied Saigon during the "American War", the Vietcong using these tunnels inflicted major damage to local American troops ; they could steal out in the night for covert ops against US troops, then drop into multiple tunnel entrances when pursued. In fact, US troops would throw grenades into the tunnel holes when they saw a Vietcong soldier drop in, but by the time the grenade went off, the north vietnamese would be long gone to another part of the connected tunnels. Before touring the area, we saw a brief movie on them. I have to say, I was quite moved to be hearing the Vietnamese side of the war and to hear the Americans described as American Imperialists. And to top it off, I have the benefit of comparing it to "my war", the Iraq war - and its spooky, frankly. For example, it was chilling to see the various bamboo booby traps that were laid to kill and injure US soldiers - holes in the ground with a variety of sharpened bamboo sticks and metal spikes that US soldiers would fall into or walk into. Ingenious, simple and brutal. I couldn't help but think of how surprised we were in Iraq when we started to lose soldiers in ways outside Rummy's plana - to explosive devices hidden in holes in the road, or dead animals, by the Iraq insurgents. Ingenious, simple and brutal.

The tunnels themselves have been expanded - so its an amazing effort to walk them . I went about 100 yards underground, bent over at the waist and crouching the whole way, with an occasional crawl or butt slide. Its pitch black in them between exits, and hotter than hell as well as small. Aileen walked them above ground and said that every 20 yards or so there would be an exit stairway ,and people from our group would stagger out, sweaty and green-faced. She said that I was one of the few women to walk the whole way through.

There was an American tank parked in the area - and some folks, including young US backpackers, climbed on it for a grinning picture - kinda made me sick since I realized that some US soldiers probably died so that that tank was abandoned. An interesting fact was that most of the Vietcong that used these tunnels were actually women from the local village - most of the men would be more mobile and would be fighting in tactical battles or engagements in a broader geo-area - but the women needed to be closer to home to take care of family. Also - the Vietcong wore specific black rubber sandals so that they could identify each other - and they killed any villagers that wore the same sandals that were not official Vietcong - I supposed to protect them from infiltrators. Here is a guy showing how they would enter a typical tunnel entrance and then cover it up. Teeny tiny.

Walking hunched over in the tunnelsl- here is the guy in front of me (I took random pictures in the darkness since I couldn't see) as he drops a level in the tunnel through a hole... you always wondered how high the drop was but it was usually no more than 2-3 feet - amazing that people running quickly through didn't snap ankles.

We popped out in the hospital room - a half buried room with very rudimentary medical capabilities.

Afterwards, we stopped at the War Remnants Museum - it focuses on both the wars against the French and the Americans. Again, you are seeing the other side of what you have heard about for 30 years. There was a very moving exhibit on the 30 or more journalists and photographers that were killed in Vietnam and Cambodia. Also , there was information on how the US worked with the French before the French punted the war to the US - and how the US assisted the South Vietnamese government as it fought the North Vietnamese army under Ho. Don't get me wrong, I feel very patriotic as an American and was off kilter hearing the propaganda against the US - but why is it (in hindsight) we so often pick a side that either turns against us or inflicts intolerable cruelty. Simple answer is it all indirectly benefits the US interests - but when you read that the South Vietnamese government imprisoned, tortured and killed 50,000 of its own people that they accused of aiding the communist insurgents, you gotta wonder what to believe.

The final rooms were pictures and stories of the collateral damage done to Vietnamese citizens - death and disfigurement from napalm, Agent Orange, carpet bombing. Very moving, very humbling, very depressing. I remember thinking," There will be a museum like this in Bagdad in 20 years, I wish that I could drag Bush, Cheney, Rummey, Wolfie, Condi and the rest of the team here to see what a mis-executed war results in." It didn't help that I was reading "Bushworld" by the NY Times writer Maureen Dowd at the same time - Aileen thought I was talking to her when really I was swearing about what I read our current government did leading up to the Iraq invasion and afterwards.

So, glad to have witnessed these things - and really glad to get the hell out of there!

We took a night sleeper bus to Nha Trang (see above), a beach town about 10 hours drive. Its a new concept here - instead of taking a night sleeper train with beds (impossible to get with Lunar New Years tying everything up), or instead of taking a bus with situp seats, these buses carry fewer people but each person has a sleeping pod - a reclined seat/bed. The first bus beds were vinyl, came with a vinyl pillow and a blanket washed sometime in the last year. And, to make it really fun, the driver .... kind of a sadist. I think he thought if he had to be up, we all would be! So he had Vietnamese TV playing really loud in speakers all over the bus until at least 10pm. He then played music till almost 11. I finally went up to ask he turn the music off and he at first shook me off and said "No". I was dumbfounded! He finally turned it down and off at 11 - must have been the official rule. We pulled over a few times for people to get off or potty stops. At 2:30 am, we pulled over, 1/2 the people got out to use the pit toilets and then got back on the bus - and watched the bus crew order and eat a small meal. Now its okay to give the guy a break to keep him chipper, but tell us so we can also be eating soup at 2:30 am.

We got dropped in downtown Nha Trang at 6am - it was a little after sunrise, and I gotta tell you, its trippy to be walking around a town with a few hundred other backpackers looking for a room. The good thing is that these towns know that there are buses arriving, and hotels and restaurants are open. Plus - the Vietnamese are up really really early.

So Aileen and I walked to the beach area hoping to score a hotel on the beach strip - the guy who directed us there said that there were no hotel rooms in town, that 4,000 people slept on the beach the night before. A slight exaggeration. We stopped in a few nicer looking places and found them booked. A guy with a bicyle rickshaw asked us if he could drive us to hotels - we looked at the single rickshaw seat, our two butts and luggage, and his typical skinny thighs, and said "huh?". He whipped out this wooden seat that allowed us both to cram on the seat , I held my suitcase and he had Aileen's backpack in the back. It was quite the sight of us slow-mow'ing along the road - hoping to avoid red lights since starting up. At one point around 7am, the national anthemn played. What was odd was that in Bangkok when that happened in a bus station, people stopped in their tracks out of respect. In Vietnam, it didn't even cause people to pause , which surprised me given they are still a socialist centrally controlled country.

Nha Trang.... not so nice. Its a cheesy beach town that in the gray weather we had, didn't offer alot of charm. There were a few things - like this barber on the sidewalk. And on the beach there were several seafood stations where you could get lobster or shrimp. I did two morning dives on the sunniest of the days - I am glad that I went but it was very sad - even though we were diving in a national maritime park, there were very few fish, it was mostly coral. The highlight was a huge cuttlefish - about 18 inches long. George went diving, too.

After a few days, we took another night sleeper bus to Hoi An to rejoin Aileen's son, John. This bus was MUCH better - had real sheets and pillows on the bed. At one of the stops, a guy from the vinyl type of bus (smells like feet) stepped into our bus and said he would buy any of our beds for a kidney!

Hoi An is a charming city halfway up the coast - and Hoi An'ners would be pissed to know that I am lumping them in with South Vietnam. It is a Unesco World Heritage site for its mixed French/Chinese/Vietnamese architecture. Its pretty crumbly, which surprised me, but also a shoppers dream. Here is a shot of the old town from across the river. Most of the classic buildings are painted yellow. This was a few days after Tet so many lanterns were still up - plus there are many shops selling these pretty silk lanterns. Lots of dogs, including one taking a breather in one of those mini-chairs.
Oh, the food in Hoi An. The food so far in Vietnam was pretty mediocre - in part due to us being in HCMC and NhaTrang near touristy spots - most choices that weren't European were fried noodle or fried rice. But Hoi On has a few specialities that were terrific - here are the White Rose Dumplings, which are rice noodle dumplings filled with shrimp in a garlicy light fish sauce. We went back twice in 3 days!

Took a cooking class at the Red Bridge cooking school - very nice!~ First thing was to wander the market with a guide. This market was possibly the best I have been in - it was fresh food (veg, fruit, spice, meat, fish)and clothes and trinkets and flowers. Here is a lady selling fresh French Baguettes (all over the place as a legacy of France colonizing Indochina) out of the back of her motorbike.

Then we got on boats and went upriver about 20 minutes to the school. Had about 90 minutes of watching our teacher cook and then we tried a few things at our own cooking stations. I was in a mood - tried three times to burn down the cooking hut , which thankfully was right on the river if things got out of control. Haven't caught a towel on fire in many a year using it as a pot holder on a gas stove!

Various shots around town. Lots of bikers. Also we made a point of ducking into the many alleys to see how the non-touristy areas looked, and sometimes walked into deadends that were the front doors of peoples houses.

Hoi An is also known for making clothing on demand. You see about 200 of these shops below - out front they have all these clothes and inside racks of silk and cotton and books of fashion, including western style. They will make you anything, to your specific measurements, overnight. We laughed since it got progressively colder as we were there and they started putting out jacket examples right in front,and it sure worked. They also make shoes. So, I had no intention of buying clothes. Aileen wanted to check it out and maybe get a special dress made for an upcoming wedding - so $130 later we both had several outfits/tops in silk. Very beautiful and fun to do - hope I wear them. When we were walking in the alleys, we stumbled upon some of the shops actually doing the sewing. I assumed that there were factories on the edge of town, which there probably are - but there are also small shops, (shall we say sweat shops?) in these alleys where people are hand sewing or sewing on foot pedal sewing machines (ie. not electric). We asked if they worked all night and they said no - I am guessing that since they take orders at night and have you come in after lunch, that they get up early and start working at 5am.

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Hoi An was definitely an improvement over southern Vietnam . We decided to save time and fly to Hanoi.

Imagine..... Cambodia

We flew to Siem Reap , Cambodia rather than take a 12 hour bus - and boy were we glad of our decision! Siem Reap is the home of Angkor Wat -and about 99 other temples of the Angkor period 10th through 15th century.. The town itself is great - we walked to the old market area and had to wade through a sea of motos like above carrying 1-5 people, with just a suggestion of traffic signals and control.





On our first full day, we hired a tuk-tuk driver for the day. Here is a boy filling our gastank on the side of the road - very typical to see stands of liter pop bottles that are filled with gas for the motos. Most people think of Angkor Wat as a single temple to see - we found out that the Khmer Ankgor kings built around 100 temples in the area.... and they are magnificant.

One of our first temples was the vast Angkor Thomm - a walled complex 12 km around - with many temples in the middle. Check out the face (probably of a king building the temple) in the gate.

The pic below is the approach to Bayan... my fave temple - its up several steep flights of stairs - and has 200 faces in it. We were watchng the Discovery channel here in Vietnam last night and they had a special on Bayan - all of the faces are of the king building it - in a close eyed meditative pose.

The women carvings are typically of cuort dancing girls. When the Thai overran the Angkor people in the 15th century, they took many of the dancing aspects back to Thailand with them.

There is a strong Hindu influence on these buddhist temples. And keep in mind that 1,000,000 people built and lived in these temple areas when London was only 30,000 people. Enjoy!

Sorry for the sideways shot - many of the temples have deteriorated - and trees have sprung up within the walls - very atmospheric. One temple was used in the Tomb Raider movie - its as if Angelina was with us there.

We totally scored our second night there. There was a festival going on... Angkor Nights - and we got tickets to see the Fine Arts Dept of Cambodia perform Khmer dances on a stage right in front of a lit-up Ankor Wat. This led to the first use of "Imagine" that I use in my title. When Aileen and I were in the Amazon rainforest, our friend Kirsten sat at breakfast watching a huge blue butterfly float by. She turned to us and said, "Can you imagine, sitting at breakfast watching a big blue butterfly fly by?". Since we had just witnessed it, and didn't need to imagine it, we cracked up. So when Aileen and I have a magic, unimagined moment on this trip, liked watching dance in front of a spotlit 800 year old Wonder of the World, we say, "Imagine?!"

One day we went farther afield... to a river about 35 km out of town that had 1000 year old carvings in the riverbed - which was not only great, but really special since my friend Clifton had been there also - and I didn't realize it was the same place until about halfway through our walk.

Many of the images are of a reclining Vishnu. And there were many symbols of fertility - especially penises - everywhere! Below - a pic of a three headed figure. And later - reclining Vishnu in the water.

Khmer ladies on the side of the road on the way back from the riverbed - it was a remote site on a dirt road.

We stopped on the road to see how a local family boiled down palmtree fruit to a sugary thick liquid. Here are some of the kids in the family I love how the little baby is looking at George.

Oh my god - we saw this several times - a guy on a moto with three LIVE pigs trussed on their back - with their faces pure confusion on their dilemma.

I love this little lady- she is holding a bird in her hand. We learned that all of these carved women were unique - and there were hundreds per temple.

A huge temple complex - was a buddhist university.

Cambodian kids learn English in the following order.

1. One dollar !( strangely enough the US dollar is used in Cambodia, even at the ATMs)

2. Oh madam, I can't discount to that - no profit!

3. You remember me (when we come back down from the temples - they would hang around the temples and pester pester - here is Aileen getting a deal on some Khmer scarves

4. Beautiful ladies.... well, Aileen and I decided that was spontaneous and not with an agenda when directed our way.

On our last day, we headed to Tonle Sap Lake to see the floating villages - they were very interesting - people live on floating rafts with houses, or in boats. They have floating churches and floating pig pens and floating schools. And it was very depressing - very very poor. Here are some houses on the way to the port to catch our boat.

Aileen is a big softie - she is giving our leftover food to the 10 or so kids who hung on the side of our floating restarant and begged. Its very sad how poor it is that kids and their mothers have few options.

These kids also hung around - but not in a boat - in a tin bowl that they paddled in. The boy had one arm.

Caught this girl washing her hair on her back porch.

Rice fields - this area is under water half the year during teh rainy season when the lake expands - and used for rice farming the other half. Some of the temples used to have water access to them for the same reason.

Snake anyone?????


















After three days in Siem Reap, we took a boat to Phnom Penh, the capital. It was a 6 hour boat ride over the lake and up the Tonle Sap river. Our bus pickup was really late and I was stressing out.... and then our van showed up. It was a regular van PACKED with people, including, we were guessing the drivers family in the front seat, and a bunch of dumbfounded tourists in the back- really had to schwoosh in. We didn't know how lucky we were until we passed an open wagon being pulled by a motorcyle - and filled with even more dumbfounded tourists. I believe one woman yelled at our van "this could be you!". The amazing thing is everyone made it on the boat - it took off an hour after the announced time. The ride was mellow - we sat inside on seats for most of the lake section. There were 50 people lying and sitting on the roof - not comfy. I sat outside on the river portion and watched villages and boats drift by. The picture below is of the wooden plank ramp we had to walk up to get on the boat. When our van stopped, it was thronged by guys who carried your bag up that ramp for a dollar - glad to have them since I would have fallen in with my bag.

Here are the folks on the roof.

When we discovered that the Cambodian king was single and 50, we decided that Aileen would make a splendid queen - and that became the joke with our driver in Siem Reap. He had arranged for a driver to meet us at the dock in Phnom Penh - and here he is - can you read the sign?

Here is Aileen infront of her future home, the royal palace of Cambodia. I asked her to work on several things when she became queen,including getting the Cambodians to stop picking their noses blatantly in public.

Also got to watch Super Tuesday returns on CNN in PP - Aileen is gonna think she is American soon from what she is learning about the American political process and parties. GO BARACK!!

Our first day in Phnom Penh, we walked around and decided to check out the central buddhist temple of Camobdia- it was right at the end of our street. We started talking to a monk who offered to give us a tour, including sitting inside a small temple with one of the oldest buddhas in Cambodia. He then asked if we wanted to see his home - so we walked to his dorm . Each major region of Cambodia has a house on campus for the monks studying there and visitors from the region. We ended up sitting in their common room for 30 minutes chatting with several monks, including the head monk of this house,who was sipping a Coke. They were really open and liked talking English - more approachable than monks in Thailand. And when we were leaving, they asked for our email addresses - so we will keep in touch. It was a highlight for me for Phnom Penh. Here are our charming monk friends below.

After chatting with them, we headed over a great restaurant called Friends - its a non-profit raising money to get street kids off the street and trained for restaurant jobs. So , again, being givers, we ate for charity sakes... and it was good.

Phnom Penh was a tough city - not the least of which was our visits to the genocide sites. We first went to S21 - its the prison in PP used by the Khmer Rouge to house and torture prisoners before they were sent to the killing fields outside of town. It was a former high school used as a prison. Its in its original state. Some rooms were bricked up into individual cells - small and crampled. Some rooms were large and housed hundreds of people shackled at the ankle to a common bar. There were rooms that housed only a bare bed, no mattress, with the shackles still attached - and a picture of a prisoner from that room . The exhibits were great and very moving. Stories of people talking about their lost family members. Stories from former guards or fighters in the field, who talked about how they worked in the Khmer Rouge to survive. Some quotes"I was afraid of suffering, I wasn't afraid of dying." "To save our lives, we had to do what we were told to do. I didn't believe what they taught me. There was nothing I could do." What struck me is how the KR went out of their way to keep people in the prison for months torturing them before they confessed to fake things like giving secrets to the enemies like the Vietnamese. I was at Aushwitz last year and this so reminded me of this. I just didn't understand the need to perpetuate their politics on people they considered against the state . An evil group. They were forced out by the Vietnamese in 1979 after 4 years. We then went out to the Killing Fields. Its out on the edge of town and is a fairly small area. There were pits that had been excavated - about 8000 bodies were taken out. There is another area as big that remains unexcavated. They suspect as many bodies. There is a large white stupa as you enter the area - its filled with shelves of skulls like these. Of the 20,000 people at S21, only 7 survived the Killing Fields. We found out in Siem Reap that our driver, Chu, lost his dad to the Khmer Rouge.

This is the second use of "Imagine" for me - I thought of the movie the Killing Fields and that amazing scene when the two men are reunited at the end with John Lennon's Imagine playing in the background... always makes me cry.

Back in town - needed a break. At lunch, our waiting tuk-tuk driver totally crashed in the back of our tuktuk.

We walked back from our massage done by blind people (again, what we won't do for charity). Walked through this market as it was closing up.This wasn't a market full of tourist chochkies - it was a real market for local people. And it was full of trash that people had thrown into the street. Kinda nasty. There was a guy walking in front of us, big guy, and I cracked up when at one point he bacame so overwhelmed by the mass of people and smells and garbage that he just said "Jesus Christ!!!"

We were in Cambodia for Chinese Lunar New Year - and in PP for the day itself. We collected fun facts about what that meant for tourists.

* The Russian Market is closed - Chinese New Year.

* No French Toast - Chinese New Year (no bread)

* Hotel rooms - 50-100% more

* Buses - 20% more

The only people in SEA not affected by Chinese new year are the chinese! Not alot of fun stuff like fireworks - alot of decorations up. Here are some folks burning pots on the sidewalk - I suspect something about new years.

Took a bus to Saigon - about 6 hours - not bad. We had a stop as we waited for a ferry to come - and were attacked by vendors pitching their wares - including this lady selling yummy friend bugs. We loved them!